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Back to portfolioHolt & Vane is a partnership of nine, practising from a single building at Lincoln’s Inn since 1911. We act for landed estates, founding families, trustees and the internationally mobile — in the drafting of settlements, the administration of estates, and the defence of both when they are contested. We take on a limited number of new families each year.
We do not organise ourselves into departments that bill each other. A family instructing us on a will is advised by the same partner when the trust is challenged nineteen years later. Select a heading to read how we approach it.
We do not act in commercial litigation, conveyancing unconnected to an estate, criminal matters, or immigration.
We draft for estates that will not survive a template: business property relief holdings, agricultural tenancies, art held through foreign entities, and beneficiaries in jurisdictions with forced heirship. Every will we prepare is accompanied by a drafting note recording why each provision exists, held in the deed room against the day it is questioned.
Led by M. D. Vane
We advise settlors and trustees on discretionary, life-interest, reserved-powers and purpose structures in England, Jersey, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands. Holt & Vane Trust Corporation Limited acts as professional trustee where a family requires institutional continuity, and declines the appointment where it does not.
Led by P. Raghunathan
Contested succession is family litigation wearing a commercial suit. We take a small number of substantial disputes each year, act as often for defendant trustees as for claimants, and settle four in five before a contested hearing — usually through a mediated deed of variation the court is then asked simply to record.
Led by J. Okonjo-Wale
For families holding an operating business across three or more generations we draft the constitution, chair the first two councils, and design the mechanism by which a member may leave with dignity and liquidity. Documents are reviewed on a five-year cycle; we consider a constitution nobody has argued about to be untested.
Led by A. Fenwick-Holt
We act for eleven estates of over one thousand acres, advising on heritage maintenance funds, conditional exemption undertakings with HMRC, public access schemes, sporting rights, and the delicate matter of which child receives the house and which receives its equivalent in value.
Led by A. Fenwick-Holt
Working alongside counsel in Paris, Geneva, Milan and Singapore, we advise on the residence and domicile position of internationally mobile families, the situs of assets on death, and the interaction of foreign community-property regimes with an English will. We do not promote schemes and never have.
Led by C. Moreau-Baptiste
We establish and advise charitable trusts and CIOs, draft investment and spending policies for perpetual endowments, and act for four cathedral fabric funds and a nineteenth-century almshouse charity. Our fees on the formation of a charity are charged at associate rates irrespective of who does the work.
Led by P. Raghunathan
Capacity work is the least glamorous and most consequential part of a private client practice. We prepare lasting powers of attorney, apply for deputyship and statutory wills, and act as attorney of last resort for eighteen clients who have no family able to take the role.
Led by M. D. Vane
Alfred Holt and Reginald Vane met as articled clerks and disagreed about everything except the drafting of settlements. The firm they founded in 1911 has never merged, never opened a branch office, and never taken outside capital. It has been led by a Vane for ninety-four of its hundred and fifteen years, which we regard as a fact rather than a virtue.
The chevron and three mullets were granted to the Vane family of Barnard Castle and are used by the firm with the consent of its descendants.
Alfred Holt, formerly of Freshfields, and Reginald Vane, admitted eighteen months earlier, take a lease of two rooms and a clerk. The firm’s first instruction is the administration of a Lancashire cotton estate valued at £41,000.
In the eighteen months after the Armistice the firm advises 214 bereaved families on intestate estates without fee. The ledger recording it survives and is kept in the partners’ room.
Reginald Vane publishes Settlements and Their Drafting, a work still cited in argument on reserved powers. The firm has kept the copyright and gives the text free to the Inns.
The Lincoln’s Inn rooms are destroyed in the raids of May 1941. Client deeds, moved to a farmhouse near Amersham the previous autumn, are recovered intact. Not one original was lost.
The firm accepts its first Jersey appointment, beginning an offshore practice now spanning four jurisdictions and 190 live settlements.
After eighty-three years in leased rooms the partnership buys the freehold of 6 New Court and names the building for its second founder.
The firm endows a bursary funding two trainees a year from families with no professional background. Twenty-eight have qualified; six are now partners elsewhere.
Forty-one fee earners, £6.8bn of family capital under stewardship, and no intention of opening a second office.
“The firm you instruct when the family cannot afford to be wrong.”
No client is named. Values are rounded and jurisdictions are given only where they are material to the point of the matter. Each entry below is a completed instruction; references are available on request and with permission.
Reconstitution of a 1954 Jersey settlement on the death of the protector; variation approved by the Royal Court without a contested hearing.
Jersey / England£310mDefence of a proprietary estoppel claim brought by a disinherited son over an agricultural estate held since 1889.
Northumberland2,240 acresSuccession to a fourth-generation family brewery; share reorganisation across seventeen beneficiaries in five jurisdictions and the retirement of the founding branch.
England / Ireland / UAE£96mRemoval and replacement of a corporate trustee following a sustained failure to consider distributions; costs recovered from the outgoing trustee personally.
Guernsey£58mDomicile of choice determination for a client resident in London since 1978; position agreed with HMRC without recourse to the tribunal.
England / Lebanon9 years’ exposureEstablishment of a perpetual endowment for a cathedral fabric fund, with a heritage maintenance covenant and a spending rule fixed at 3.2 per cent.
England£45mCross-border probate for an estate spanning three jurisdictions; ancillary grants obtained within eleven weeks of the English grant.
England / Portugal / Singapore£72mRectification of a 1986 accumulation and maintenance settlement drafted by another firm; relief obtained and the charge to tax discharged in full.
England£11.4m relievedFive of the nine partners are shown. Every file is opened in a partner’s name and stays there; delegation happens beneath that name, never instead of it.
Senior Partner
Great-grandson of the founder and the firm’s fourth Vane. Advises eleven families across at least three generations each; sits on the Chancery Bar liaison committee and edits the ninth edition of his great-grandfather’s text.
Partner — International Succession
Joined from a Zurich trustee in 2006. Leads the offshore trusteeship practice and the firm’s work for South Asian families with assets split between London, Dubai and Chennai.
Partner — Estates & Governance
Farms 300 acres in Wiltshire, which he says is the only useful qualification for advising landowners. Chairs the family councils of three operating businesses and has drafted forty-one family constitutions.
Partner — Cross-border Tax
Avocate à la Cour de Paris and solicitor of England and Wales. Handles the collision of French forced heirship with English testamentary freedom, and the arrival in London of families who have never been resident anywhere twice.
Partner — Contentious Trusts
Eleven years at the Chancery Bar before joining the firm in 2017. Takes six substantial disputes a year and refuses the seventh; accredited mediator and, more often, the reason a mediation is not needed.
Helena Strand-Wray (Probate), Dominic Achebe (Trusts), Rosalind Peyton-Gore (Court of Protection) and Yusuf Karadag (Estates) complete the partnership. Full profiles are provided with every engagement letter.
Nine partners · Forty-one fee earners
| Senior Partner | £895/hr |
|---|---|
| Partner | £720/hr |
| Senior Associate | £540/hr |
| Associate | £395/hr |
| Trainee Solicitor | £185/hr |
All rates exclusive of VAT at 20 per cent. Time is recorded in six-minute units. A first conference of up to one hour is not charged.
Holt & Vane LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (registered number OC318442), authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under number 418902. A list of members is available for inspection at the registered office. VAT registration 219 4471 03.
Compulsory professional indemnity insurance is maintained with Travers Mutual Insurance Company Limited, policy HV-2026-0114, with territorial coverage worldwide and a limit of indemnity of £20m for any one claim. Details are available on request.
Any concern should first be raised with the client care partner, Rosalind Peyton-Gore. If we have not resolved it within eight weeks you may refer the matter to the Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6167, Slough SL1 0EH, ordinarily within six months of our final response.
Client money is held with Coutts & Co in a general client account under the SRA Accounts Rules. Interest is paid at 0.6 per cent below the Bank of England base rate on balances held for more than seven days, with a de minimis of £50.
Our bank details will never change during a matter and we will never notify a change by email. Any message purporting to do so is fraudulent. Telephone the fee earner on the number in your engagement letter before transmitting funds. We accept no liability for funds sent on unverified instructions.
We are obliged to verify the identity of every client and, where relevant, the source of funds and source of wealth, before acting. We cannot proceed until that is complete and we may be required to make a report without informing you.
Holt & Vane LLP
Vane House, 6 New Court
Lincoln’s Inn
London WC2A 3QP
Attendance is by prior arrangement; the gates of Lincoln’s Inn close to vehicles at 19.00. Nearest stations are Chancery Lane, Holborn and Temple. We will attend clients at home or in hospital anywhere in England and Wales where capacity or infirmity requires it, and make no charge for travel within the M25.
Please do not send confidential information, deeds or original documents with a first enquiry. No solicitor-and-client relationship arises until we have completed our conflict and identity checks and you have signed an engagement letter. A first conference of up to one hour is not charged, and we will tell you in it whether we are the right firm for the matter.
chambers@holtvane.co.uk