Trusts
Do I need a Trust?
A Trust is an arrangement in which an individual transfers assets to one or more people - Trustees - who will hold it for the benefit of another person or group of people, beneficiaries. The most common form of Trust is a Life Interest Trust.
Some Trusts can be written into a Will. A couple of examples of such Testamentary Trusts are:
Protective Property Trusts - these are useful where a couple owns a home jointly and wants to protect the share of the first to die against being used for the survivor's care fees or potentially lost in sideways disinheritance if the survivor subsequently enters a new relationship.
Vulnerable Person's Trust - where a beneficiary has an issue (perhaps a disability or an addiction) which makes it impractical to leave their inheritance to them directly, it can be left via a Trust with instructions for the Trustees as to how to manage that inheritance for them.
Family and Asset Protection Trusts
What does this Trust do?
The idea of a Family and Asset Protection Trust is to take your main asset – usually the family home – and transfer it in a trust so that you no longer own it (although as the Settlor Trustee you retain the right to make all the crucial decisions governing the assets within the Trust). The theory is that if a Trust rather than you owns the property, it sits outside of your calculable assets.
Transferring your assets to a trust during your lifetime is a great way to protect them from third parties. This can be done without losing control over the assets and being able to continue to deal with them as you wish.
The motivation to place a property into a Trust like this must not be in order to avoid care home fees as this could potentially be overturned by the courts. However, it is an excellent tool for speeding up the probate process, for protecting against sideways disinheritance, for guarding against financial loss or bankruptcy and for many other reasons.
