Arrangement fees, pensions and IHT conundrums

One of the big benefits of putting money in a pension fund that is that they are generally excluded from your estate on death and are not liable to IHT (providing you were making contributions whilst you are in good health).  Worth considering if you have capacity within your lifetime allowance and a lot cheaper and simpler solution to setting up trusts etc - worth bearing in mind.

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My friend doesn't have kids but he used Octopus Inheritance tax services to try and minimize his IHT bill (you invest in qualifying companies for a relatively crappy return, I think around 3%pa or so but the main benefit is that after 2 years, your IHT liability is then 0). Of course his mum didn't make it (with only a few months to go until 2 years would have been up). I managed the part of his investments that were below the IHT threshold and that made a 30% return, fortunately (not down to my skills, just markets have been good).

So he now has a pretty big IHT bill, crappy return from octopus (who charge regardless whether the investments do what they were supposed to do), huge legal/advisor fees and frozen assets in his mum's account, with horrendous fees to borrow to pay IHT bill (not doing this now).
You can't plan for everything...(though to be fair, he barely planned for anything but the octopus route was the only sensible option at the time).