Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP

Jennifer Emms

Jennifer advises on a range of private wealth matters, including taxation, trusts, estate planning, Wills and disclosure and transparency regimes (such as CRS). She has a mixture of domestic and international clients, often with complex personal and business interests across multiple jurisdictions. Jennifer has a keen interest in charities and philanthropy, which is a key part of her practice. She spent six months as an in-house legal adviser to a large, well-known children’s charity. Since then she has helped guide donors and trustees through a broad spectrum of matters, from establishing charities to reporting serious incidents, charity mergers, grant agreements, independence and governance issues, trustee disqualification proceedings and investment duties.   Due to her background at Linklaters, Jennifer also has significant and unique experience in both the use of trusts and the participation of trustees in commercial transactions covering (but not limited to) securitisations, escrows and trustee purchases. Jennifer has acted for individuals, professional trustees, companies, financial institutions and a number of different types of charity from trusts to royal charter companies. She has been recognised by eprivateclient as one of their Top 35 under 35 on several occasions and, in 2019, was named as  a “Rising Star” in the charity field by Legal 500. The 2020 Legal 500 guide lists her as a key lawyer in the areas of personal tax, trusts and probate, and charities and not-for-profit.   She regularly contributes articles on taxation, charity and philanthropy to academic publications.

Ceris Gardner

Ceris is a partner and head of the Charity and Philanthropy practice and head of the Immigration practice. Ceris' areas of expertise include tax, estate planning, family governance, charity law and philanthropy and immigration. She advises UK and non-UK domiciled and resident individuals, families, estates and trustees on UK and international tax and succession issues, establishing UK and offshore trusts, family limited partnerships and other cross border asset-holding structures.Ceris also has a wealth of experience advising on immigration, philanthropy and art and heritage property matters. Her wide-ranging experience means that, for clients, she is eminently qualified to take on the role of their trusted adviser.Ceris is well known for advising both grant-making and operational charities on matters of charity law and tax with a particular emphasis recently on governance and risk issues. She has twice won the "Trusted Advisor of the Year" award at the STEP Private Client Awards, a coveted accolade which is based on votes of STEP members. She appears on the 2019 Private Client Global Elite, which is the list of the world's elite lawyers advising UHNW.Ceris is named as a Leading Individual in the Legal 500 Directory and is ranked in Band 1 in the Chambers HNW guide 2020. She was named as one of the UK's Top Ten Tax and Trust Lawyers by Spear's Magazine in 2019 and 2020 and appears in the 2020 Spears 500. She was also ranked by Best Lawyers 2021 as a leading specialist in Charity Law, Art Law and Trusts and Personal Tax. Ceris is a trustee of Crimestoppers UK, Philanthropy Impact and National Philanthropic Trust Transatlantic and is Chair of the board of trustees of National Philanthropic Trust UK.

Emma-Jane Weider

Emma-Jane is Managing Partner of Maurice Turnor Gardner. She specialises in advising wealthy families, trust companies and banks in connection with tax, estate planning and philanthropy matters.Emma-Jane has a broad private wealth practice and a diverse portfolio of clients from the UK and the rest of the world, each of whom look to her for sensible and pragmatic advice on all of the issues which affect wealthy individuals and trustees (and those who transact with them). Emma-Jane’s extensive experience of advising on immigration matters and trusts in a commercial context complement her main area of practice.She is also a key member of the firm’s charity and philanthropy team and has a special interest in tax-efficient cross-border giving and the issues which are relevant to counter-parties in transactions with charities. She regularly advises operating and grant-making cross-border charities on diverse legal and governance issues.Emma-Jane is individually ranked in the 2020 Chambers HNW guide and Chambers UK.  She is also ranked as a Band 1 Leading Individual by the Legal 500 2020 guide and by Best Lawyers 2021 as a leading specialist in the area of Wealth Management.