Privacy Policy

Effective date: 27 January 2026

1. Introduction

This privacy policy explains how Gerard James Estate Planning Limited (“we”, “us”, “our”) collects, uses and protects your personal data when you visit our website https://gerardjamesestateplanning.co.uk/ or use our estate planning services, including will-writing, trusts, lasting powers of attorney and estate-administration services.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and to processing your personal data fairly, lawfully and transparently in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

2. Who we are and how to contact us

Gerard James Estate Planning Limited is the data controller for the personal data we process in connection with our website and estate-planning services.

Our contact details are:

Name:: Gerard James Estate Planning Limited
Address:: 21 New Walk, Leicester, LE1 6TE, United Kingdom (registered office)
Telephone:: 07905 748073
Email:: info@gerardjamesestateplanning.co.uk
Website:: https://gerardjamesestateplanning.co.uk/

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your personal data, please contact us using the details above.

3. Types of personal data we collect

Depending on your relationship with us (for example client, beneficiary, executor, website visitor), we may collect and use:

Identity and contact details: name, address, email address, telephone numbers, date of birth, national insurance number, identification documents (such as passport or driving licence).
Client instruction details: information about your family, relationships and dependants, marital and civil-partnership status, information about your wishes regarding wills, trusts, guardianship and other estate-planning arrangements.
Financial and asset information: details of your assets and liabilities, property ownership, bank and investment accounts, pensions, life policies, business interests, trust interests and similar financial information.
Special category data: information about your health or medical conditions where relevant to your estate planning (for example to justify certain provisions in a will or LPA), and any other information that may reveal religious or philosophical beliefs or other sensitive information if you choose to share it.
Information about beneficiaries, executors and other third parties: names, contact details and other personal data needed to identify and contact people named in your estate-planning documents or involved in the administration of an estate.
Marketing and communication data: your communication preferences and records of your interactions with us, such as emails, calls and meeting notes.
Website and technical data: IP address, browser type, device information, cookie identifiers and information about how you use our website (pages visited, time and date, referral information).
Enquiry and feedback data: information you provide when you contact us via phone, email, online forms or social media, or when you give feedback or make a complaint.

We may collect personal data directly from you, from publicly available sources, and from third parties such as other professional advisers, financial institutions, family members, executors, trustees, attorneys or organisations involved in the administration of an estate.

4. How we collect your personal data

We may collect personal data when you:

Contact us by phone, email, post, online enquiry form or in person.
Engage us to provide estate-planning or related services.
Complete our forms, questionnaires or provide documents and information.
Attend meetings or appointments with us, including meetings in your home.
Visit our website, which uses cookies and similar technologies as described in section 9.

We may also receive personal data about you from:

Other professional advisers (for example solicitors, accountants, financial advisers).
Banks, investment providers, pension companies and insurance providers.
Executors, administrators, trustees, attorneys and beneficiaries.
Public sources, such as Companies House, HM Land Registry or electoral registers.

5. Purposes and legal bases for using your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. The main legal bases we rely on are:

Contract: to take steps at your request before entering into a contract and to perform our contract with you.
Legal obligation: to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, including anti-money-laundering and tax obligations.
Legitimate interests: where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
Consent: where you have given clear consent to process your personal data for a specific purpose (for example certain marketing communications or some uses of special-category data).

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

Providing estate-planning and related services

To advise you on and prepare wills, trusts, letters of wishes, lasting powers of attorney and other estate-planning documents.
To administer estates, liaise with executors and beneficiaries and deal with related legal and tax matters.

Legal bases: contract, legal obligation, legitimate interests.

Client onboarding and regulatory compliance

To verify your identity, run anti-money-laundering and sanctions checks, and carry out other due-diligence.
To maintain proper records and comply with obligations to regulators, law-enforcement bodies and HMRC.

Legal bases: legal obligation, legitimate interests.

Managing our relationship with you

To respond to enquiries, keep you informed about the progress of your matter, handle billing and payments and deal with any complaints or queries.

Legal bases: contract, legitimate interests.

Marketing and business development

To send you relevant updates, newsletters or information about our services that may be of interest to you.
To manage events, seminars and similar activities.

Legal bases: legitimate interests or consent (depending on the communication and your relationship with us). You can opt out at any time (see section 10).

Website operation and improvement

To operate our website, understand how visitors use it, and improve its functionality and security.

Legal bases: legitimate interests, and consent for non-essential cookies.

Legal claims

To establish, exercise or defend legal claims, whether in court proceedings or in an administrative or out-of-court procedure.

Legal bases: legitimate interests, legal obligation.

For special-category data (such as health information), we may rely on additional conditions, for example where processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, or where you have given explicit consent.

6. Sharing your personal data

We may share your personal data with:

Professional advisers and other parties involved in providing our services, such as solicitors, barristers, accountants, financial advisers, actuaries and tax specialists.
Executors, administrators, trustees, attorneys and beneficiaries where necessary to give effect to your instructions or administer an estate.
Service providers who support our business, including IT and cloud-service providers, document-management and case-management systems, identity-verification services and confidential-waste-disposal providers.
Banks, investment providers, pension companies, insurance companies and similar organisations when implementing your estate-planning arrangements.
Courts, tribunals, HMRC, the Office of the Public Guardian, the Probate Registry, regulators, law-enforcement bodies and public authorities, where required or permitted by law.
Our insurers, brokers and professional advisers in connection with insurance cover, audits and professional-risk management.

Where we use third-party service providers, we require them to take appropriate security measures and only process personal data in accordance with our instructions.

We do not sell your personal data to third parties.

7. International transfers

Some of our service providers or other recipients may be located outside the UK, or may transfer data outside the UK. Where we transfer your personal data outside the UK, we will ensure that it is protected by appropriate safeguards, such as:

A decision by the UK government that the recipient country provides an adequate level of protection; or
Contracts with the recipient that include standard data-protection clauses approved for use in the UK; or
Another safeguard permitted by UK data-protection law.

You can contact us for more information about the specific safeguards we use for international transfers.

8. Data retention – how long we keep your data

We will only keep your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this policy, including to satisfy legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.

Retention periods may vary depending on the type of data and the nature of our engagement, but typically:

Client matter files (including wills, trust and LPA files): retained for 7–15 years from closure of the matter or, where appropriate, for as long as necessary to administer the estate or manage ongoing trust matters.
Copies of wills, LPAs and key documents: may be retained for longer where needed to provide ongoing services or for evidential purposes.
Anti-money-laundering and identity-verification records: retained for at least 5 years after the end of the client relationship, in line with legal requirements.
Marketing data: kept until you withdraw your consent or object to processing, or after a period of inactivity.
Website logs and analytics: retained for 12–24 months.

When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal data, we will delete or anonymise it.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies to distinguish you from other users, provide essential site functionality, improve performance and analyse how our site is used.

Some cookies are essential for the operation of the site. Others are non-essential (for example analytics cookies) and we will only use these with your consent.

You can manage or disable cookies through your browser settings and any cookie-management tools provided on our website. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our separate Cookie Policy or contact us using the details above.

10. Your rights

Under UK data-protection law, you have rights in relation to your personal data, subject to certain conditions and exemptions:

Right of access: to obtain a copy of your personal data and information about how we process it.
Right to rectification: to have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected.
Right to erasure: to request that we delete your personal data in certain circumstances.
Right to restrict processing: to request that we suspend processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
Right to data portability: to receive certain personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format and to have that data transmitted to another controller.
Right to object: to object to our processing where we rely on legitimate interests or are processing your data for direct marketing.
Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling: to not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that significantly affect you, unless permitted by law and subject to safeguards.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details in section 2. We may need to request specific information from you to confirm your identity before responding to your request.

11. Marketing communications

We may use your contact details to send you information about our services or estate-planning updates that we believe may be of interest to you.

You can opt out of marketing communications at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions in our emails, or by contacting us using the details in section 2.

Even if you opt out of marketing, we may still send you service messages that are necessary for the performance of our contract with you or required by law.

12. Data security

We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data from accidental loss, unauthorised access, use, alteration or disclosure.

We limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know it and who are subject to confidentiality obligations.

We regularly review our information-security arrangements and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected personal-data breach where we are legally required to do so.

13. Complaints and your right to contact the ICO

If you have any concerns about how we use your personal data, please contact us first so we can try to resolve your concern.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

Website:: www.ico.org.uk
Telephone:: 0303 123 1113
Address:: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

14. Changes to this privacy policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law or in how we operate.

The most current version will always be available on our website at https://gerardjamesestateplanning.co.uk/privacy-policy/ and will state the date it was last updated.

Where appropriate, we will notify you of any significant changes.