Legacy administration

Award-winning legacy lawyers for charities.

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Specialist legacy lawyers

Legacy income is a critical source of funding for charities, making effective legacy administration essential. Managing charitable estates, handling probate matters and resolving legacy disputes requires specialist legal expertise to ensure gifts are protected and maximised.

Our experienced legacy administration specialists support charities with the full range of legacy and probate matters – from estate administration and complex beneficiary issues to contested wills and Charity Commission considerations. We act as trusted advisers, helping safeguard legacy income while reducing risk, delay and unnecessary cost.

We understand that in-house teams can face capacity pressures due to fluctuating caseloads, sickness or organisational change. Our experts provide flexible, specialist support, enabling charities to maintain momentum and secure every legacy to which they are entitled.

Our expertise in charity legacy administration has been recognised by the Smee & Ford Legacy Giving Awards, where we were named Best Legal Partner to the Legacy Sector – reflecting both our technical strength and deep understanding of the charity sector.

Our services

We offer flexible, outsourced support to help manage legacy casework of any size, from 50 to over 1,500 cases, on either a full or partial basis, for short or long-term needs. We provide comprehensive support, handling every aspect of case management from initial setup to final conclusion, including:

  • Administrative support: setting up cases, logging income and saving post. Subject to IT arrangements, we can start supporting you within days and can step in quickly when workload challenges arise.
  • Day-to-day casework: managing the ongoing administration of cases, including corresponding with executors, reviewing and approving Estate Accounts, identifying added‑value opportunities and proactively progressing matters.
  • Senior-level expertise: access a team of 40+ professionals with expertise in charity law, governance, employment and property matters, as well as senior oversight for complex, contentious or sensitive estates.
  • Transparent and competitive pricing: we operate on a fixed-fee basis, providing certainty over costs and avoiding the unpredictability of traditional solicitors’ hourly rates.
  • Financial focus: a focus on maximising income while controlling costs, recognising the financial pressures charities face.
  • Highly experienced: experience managing over £175m in legacy income and working with the top 10 legacy-earning charities

Related services

Related services

Charity property

Our specialist charity lawyers are nationally renowned and respected. We pride ourselves on giving straight-talking charity legal advice with a mantra of ‘maximising property’ (increasing return or minimising costs).

We have specialists who can offer expert charity legal advice to help manage portfolios, complex property transactions and structural reorganisations, advise on the full range of disputes and issues arising in relation to short and long residential leases, commercial landlord and tenant, third party rights and rural land. Our approach is centred around three pillars: Operational and strategic property; Retail & Investment; and Legacy Property. We apply our deep knowledge of charity law to every stage of the property lifecycle.

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General Counsel Services

Alongside the strategic support we also advise our charity clients through a bespoke outsourced inhouse legal service. Our GC services solution allows our charity clients to outsource low value, low risk matters to us for a fixed monthly cost. We pick up your business as usual and ad-hoc queries so that your in-house team can focus on the higher value, more strategic projects which support the overall growth. In essence, our role is to advise on all legal queries which a reasonably competent in-house counsel would. We operate this model with a number of our charity clients, including Save the Children, Dogs Trust and Cancer Research UK.

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Legacy Management

We have a dedicated Legacies team which supports our national charity sector clients on all aspects of legacy income. We act for each of the top 10 legacy earning charities in the UK and have an impressive roster of large national charity clients – with key clients including the National Trust, RSPB, Age UK, RSPCA and The Salvation Army.

We support with the management of their legacy income, including resolving issues and disputes surrounding property and contentious probate, administering estates where the charity is the appointed executor or has decided to take up the role of personal representative and we advise on the related charity governance issues. The combination of governance, charity law, and income strategies is what makes our charities team unique.

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Why choose Foot Anstey?

We support many of the UK’s most respected charities, including the National Trust, Dogs Trust, RNID, The Donkey Sanctuary, RAF Benevolent Fund, Scope, The Salvation Army, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance and Freedom from Torture.

Whether you are managing 50 legacy cases or more than 1,500, we provide flexible support that works around your team. We can fully or partly outsource your legacy administration, handling everything from day-to-day casework to complex estates and senior-level reporting. Our fixed, competitive fees give you cost certainty and avoid traditional hourly rates.

You will have access to experienced charity probate, property and contentious specialists who understand the pressures in-house teams face. We step in quickly when there are resourcing gaps, help ensure compliance, and provide practical advice to protect and maximise legacy income.

We also help improve processes, reporting and forecasting, identifying ways to increase income and reduce costs. Our work has helped one charity grow legacy income from under £1 million to over £4.5 million, and we have successfully managed portfolios of more than 1,500 cases worth £50–60 million.

With decades of charity sector experience, we combine technical expertise with clear, practical advice – acting as a trusted extension of your team to help you protect every gift and maximise its impact.

Our people

Our Legacy Administration team is an experienced and dedicated group supporting charities with legacy matters across the UK. What began over a decade ago with just two specialists has grown into an 10‑strong team, each bringing their own expertise, insight and commitment to maximising legacy income for charitable organisations.

Together, we support the full breadth of legacy work — from day‑to‑day case administration to handling complex, sensitive or high‑value matters with care and professionalism. We currently help manage more than £175 million in legacy income and have worked with charities navigating anywhere from 50 to over 1,500 legacy cases.

Our hybrid model means you benefit from both day‑to‑day administration support and seamless escalation to specialist legal colleagues where required, ensuring complex matters are handled efficiently and with technical accuracy.

Our deep understanding of the legacy sector means we can offer more than technical support; we provide practical guidance, sector insight and a collaborative approach that enables our clients to protect their legacy income and strengthen relationships with supporters and stakeholders.

Meet our team

Key contacts

What do our clients say?

The team is committed to ensuring the work is high quality and they are so passionate about supporting our work, which is really refreshing.

National Trust, Head of Legacy Administration,

We work closely with Lucy and her team, and they feel like an extension of our team which has enabled fantastic collaboration between us. The team are knowledgeable, efficient and we appreciate that they have worked hard to understand our culture and ways of working so they can provide a level of service to our supporters that also meets our values.

Age UK , Head of Legacies

We have been working with the Legacy Administration Service at Foot Anstey for a number of years. The team combines a highly professional approach and knowledge with the law with an acute awareness of the sensitivity and sympathy required in dealing with each matter on behalf of a charity. We depend on the team to act swiftly and efficiently while bearing our best interests in mind.

RSPB, Head of Legacy Administration

Foot Anstey’s full range of services have been of enormous help to the British Heart Foundation to advance and resolve complex issues on our files and to keep on top of our case management. They are friendly, approachable and great to work with.

British Heart Foundation, Legacy Manager

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