Trusts play an integral part in protecting your wealth, giving you control over how your assets will be used in the future and confidence that they will protect and preserving family assets according to your wishes. Lasting for up to 125 years, your trusts could provide down your bloodline for generations to come.
Our legal experts will create a bespoke solution according to your individual circumstances and you’ll be guided through all the important decisions you need to make in plain, straightforward language, quickly and easily.
You can protect a wide range of assets in various trusts including:
- Your home
- Your money
- Your pensions
- Your life assurance
- Your business assets
- Your investments
Ultimately, anything can be passed down to your beneficiaries in a secure, protected trust environment, regardless of its value.
What does a trust protect from?
On first death
- Marriage after Death: Most people would say ‘it won’t happen to me’ but if the surviving spouse remarries and leaves their assets to the new spouse on their death, on the new spouse’s death their Will will likely not consider your children.
- Care fees: If the whole family home is in the survivor’s name, the value of the house can, under current legislation, be taken into account and sold to pay for care fees.
On second death, at a beneficiary level
- Generational IHT: Holding assets on trust ensures that they do not add to the beneficiaries’ estate and impact on their own Inheritance Tax liability.
- Divorce: Placing assets into trust ensures that in the event of divorce proceedings, what you intended your chosen beneficiaries to receive is not taken into account during the settlement and thus cannot pass out of the family.
- Creditors or bankruptcy: If any beneficiaries are ever subject to creditor claims/bankruptcy then their inheritance would not be exposed to these claims.
- Care fees of their own: Holding assets on trust ensures that they do not add to the beneficiaries own estate. The benefit of this is that those assets cannot be taken into consideration when assessing for care costs.
Who should make a trust?
Anyone who owns their home, or plans to eventually is absolutely someone whom we would advise should consider creating a trust, or alternatively anyone who has anything around £100,000 in bank accounts or investments.
Other people, who have large pension plans or life assurance policies, should consider assigning them to trust too, as should anyone with business or agricultural assets.
Ultimately, anyone who has any concerns over what could happen to the assets once they are gone should get in contact so we can help you understand exactly how trusts could benefit you and your family.