About KeepTheLot

KeepTheLot exists to make estate planning understandable, so ordinary families keep as much of what they have built as the law legitimately allows.

Last updated

In short

  • We are an independent information service covering England & Wales. We are not a law firm and we do not give regulated advice.
  • Every guide is free, with no sign-up, no gated content and no adverts.
  • Every figure comes from GOV.UK, HMRC or the Office of the Public Guardian, and is dated.
  • We make money by introducing people who ask for it to regulated advisers, who may pay us a referral fee.

Why we built this#

Estate planning is written in two registers: legal documents nobody outside the profession can read, and marketing that skips the parts that would cost a sale. Somewhere in between are millions of people who just want to know whether they need a will, whether a trust is worth it, and whether the council can really take the house.

Those questions have answers. They are not always the answers people want, but they are knowable, and they can be said in plain English with the actual numbers attached. That is the whole idea.

What we do#

  • Plain-English guides to wills, trusts, lasting power of attorney, inheritance tax, probate and care fees.
  • A trust savings calculator that shows the allowances your estate can use and what a property trust could ring-fence — with the caveats displayed, not buried.
  • Free introductions to regulated advisers, for people who want to speak to a professional.

What we are not#

Please read this bit

KeepTheLot is not a law firm. We are not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Nothing on this site is legal or financial advice, and reading it does not create any professional relationship. We publish general information about the law in England & Wales; your circumstances are your own, and acting on general information without advice is how people get things wrong.

We also do not cover funerals, and we do not write about Scotland or Northern Ireland, where the law differs substantially.

How we write#

Three rules, applied to every page:

  1. Answer the question first. No throat-clearing, no 400 words of preamble before the number.
  2. Cite the source. Every legal or tax figure links to GOV.UK, HMRC or the relevant regulator, and every page shows when its figures were last checked.
  3. Say when something is a bad idea. Including when the honest answer is that you do not need to buy anything.

Our editorial policy sets out how content is researched, reviewed and corrected.

Who writes it#

Guides are written and fact-checked by the KeepTheLot editorial team against primary sources. We are appointing an independent specialist reviewer — an SRA-regulated solicitor, STEP or IPW member — and when they are in place their name, credentials and a link to their public register entry will appear on every page they review.

Until then we say so plainly, and we do not display a credential we cannot evidence. An unverifiable expert is worse than none. See our experts.

How we pay for it#

When you ask to speak to an expert, we introduce you to a regulated adviser, who may pay us a referral fee. We take no advertising, run no affiliate links, and the fee never influences what our guides say or who we match you with. The full explanation, including what we do and do not accept, is on how we work.

Get in touch#

Corrections, questions and complaints are all welcome — and corrections especially. If you think something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will check it against the source and fix it.