About
“I spent decades building an advice firm, then sold it. What I do now is the work I always found most interesting - and I do it alongside other firms rather than in competition with them.” Ray Best, MD.
What Changed
UnaVida Wealth Management Ltd was an independent financial adviser for many years. Ray Best sold the client bank, withdrew from the Financial Conduct Authority, and closed that chapter deliberately rather than by drift.
We hold no regulated permissions. We do not advise retail clients, we do not manage investments, and we do not arrange financial products.
What remained was the part of the work Ray had specialised in for three decades: estate planning, trusts and inheritance tax. None of that requires FCA authorisation.
That work is now delivered through Wills, Tax & Trusts Ltd, and this site is how professional firms find it.
Who We Work With
Financial advisers, wealth managers, accountants, solicitors and other professional firms whose clients need estate planning work the firm would rather not build in-house.
Sometimes that is one difficult case. More often it becomes a standing arrangement, because once a firm has a route for this work it tends to find more of it among its existing clients than it expected.
We do not work directly with retail clients introduced through this site.
Why Firms Outsource This to Us
Estate planning sits awkwardly for most professional firms. It comes up constantly, it matters enormously to the client, and it rarely justifies employing someone to do it.
The alternatives are to turn the work away, to attempt it at the end of your competence, or to refer it to a firm that may go on to advise your client about everything else.
We are the fourth option. We do the technical work, you stay the lead adviser, and the client comes back to you when it is done.
Your client stays your client. That is not a reassurance we offer reluctantly – it is the basis of the whole arrangement.
Decades of Experience
Ray Best has spent more than three decades on estate planning, inheritance tax and business succession, first inside a regulated advice practice and now outside one.
He contributed to Inheritance Tax Simplified, has written feature articles for Tax Adviser magazine, and published EBT Bombshell some years before HMRC’s actions confirmed the scale of that particular problem.
More recently he has written Pensions Betrayed and Pension Paradigm, both examining what the pension and inheritance tax reforms mean for families and for the professionals advising them.
The pattern across all of it is the same: identifying a problem while there is still time to do something about it.
How to Start
Send us a case, or a question about one.
The first conversation is free of charge and entirely without obligation. Thirty minutes is usually enough to establish whether there is something worth doing.
Please do not send client details at that stage. We will tell you what we need and how to sent it securely once there is a reason to.
If we cannot help, we will say so quickly. There is nothing in it for either of us in taking on work we cannot do well.
If we can, you will get a clear account of what is involved and what it costs before anything begins.
And at every stage, your client remains yours.
Get to Know Ray
Three decades in estate planning and inheritance tax, and the books that came out of it.
UnaVida Wealth Management Ltd is no longer a regulated adviser and has withdrawn from the FCA.
We do not provide regulated financial advice to retail clients.
All estate planning, trust structuring, and inheritance tax consultancy are non-regulated business-to-business services delivered via Wills, Tax & Trusts Ltd.
Frequently Asked Questions
What we do, what we do not do, and how your client relationship is protected.