Estate planning

I am looking for financial advice for a friend and would like to hear from anyone who does this for a living and has legal and financial expertise. Rather than taking pot luck with Yellow Pages I am hoping some of the contributors on here may be interested. If so, please e-mail me at Stuart snipped-for-privacy@ntlworld.com, giving me a general idea of the strategy you would adopt and the likely setup costs. The basic details are: Ernest McCarthy dies on Sep 17th 2003, aged 98, and bequeaths everything to his daughter (only child). This consists of a house, some equities, and unit trusts. Other money was gifted to her but was caught by the 7 year rule. This was put into single life investment bonds with a major insurance company between 1998 and 2000. Probate has been obtained for the estate. The daughter, Joyce Richards (aged 61, divorced) owns her own house (250K, no mortgage) and has 2 sons. Liam Richards, aged 35, owns a house jointly with his partner (130K, 90K mortgage) and they have a daughter, Sylvia, aged 2. They plan to marry shortly. Sam Richards, aged 30, lives in rented accommodation and has no plans to settle down at present. Ideally Joyce would like to protect the income from her investments but isn't bothered about owning the assets. Although she is in good health, presumably a deed of variation would reduce the chances of a 2nd IHT bill if she were to die within 7 years. Any comments, on here or by e-mail, would be much appreciated.