Before the Budget: Is your client's 'surplus' already spoken for?

"Of course we'll help" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say to your children. It is a less satisfactory cashflow assumption. Especially when nobody has agreed what help means, when it ends or what happens if somebody else needs it too (Dad, this is a column, not a funding application). Imagine a client keen to give a daughter £50,000 towards a deposit before the Budget. Her brother has received £500 a month for three years, "just until he's on his feet". The conversation has centred on the deposit. The standing order has quietly got on with being a standing order. Speculation about ...