Withers Worldwide

Overview

Robin advises on all aspects of probate, succession and tax planning, often with an international element, and acts as executor and trustee of complex estates and trusts (including pension funds).

He supervises the administration of estates with values ranging from the modest to the multi-million, often co-ordinating teams of professional advisers for major estates, trustee companies and institutional clients.

Robin is one of Spear's top 25 UK Tax and Trust solicitors, described as being 'top of the tree in the probate world'.

Publications and speaking engagements

• Robin is an author of Sweet and Maxwell’s ‘Practical Will Precedents’
• Robin was responsible for the chapters on Business and Agricultural Property in Tolley’s ‘Administration of Estates’, and is writing a new chapter on International Estates for the same book.
• Robin has contributed to ‘McCutcheon on Inheritance Tax’, ‘The Lawyer’s Factbook’ and ‘Practical Tax Planning’ as well as to numerous legal and tax journals.
• Robin lectures widely, particularly on aspects of international succession law. He has recently written articles for the Financial Times, the Guardian online, the Daily Telegraph online and Wealth Briefing, the latter two on the Law Commission Report on Intestacy, for which he was on the expert advisory group.

Articles in legal journals include:

• 'Probate Section Conference 2010 round-up and workshops', PS 2010, 89(Sep), 9-12
• 'Handling the challenges of cross-border estates', E.C.A. 2008, 13(4), 19-22
• 'Joint property - some valuation issues', P.C.B. 2008, 6, 364-371
• 'Tax treatment of estates with a Continental European element: Part 2: traps and planning opportunities', P.C.B. 2006, 5, 283-291 & P.C.B. 2006, 4, 227-234
• 'Past misdemeanours', T. & E.T.J. 2003, 36(May), 4-6
• 'New rules for the enforcement in the United Kingdom of foreign (UK) tax debts', P.C.B. 2002, 4, 259-262
• 'The Lloyd's (and other) lessons of Mallender and Hardcastle (Case Comment)', P.C.B. 2001, 4, 191-196
• 'Raising the dead's taxes', S.J. 2001, 145(45), 1109-1110

Memberships

• STEP

On a personal note

Robin’s hobby is his boat on the Thames, which he is said, quite unfairly, to captain with the tact and discretion of Captain Bligh.