trusts

A common will trust involves a parent providing for the estate to pass to their children at specified age, usually if the other parent has died first.

Life interest trusts enable you to give your estate to someone for their lifetime and then pass to someone else or other people when they die. It is a useful way to make sure that your children will benefit if you die young and your spouse remarries. It can also be useful to older people who would like to guarantee that their grandchildren eventually benefit.

Discretionary trusts are a very useful form of flexible trust that do not give any definite entitlement to beneficiaries. This type of trust allows the trustees to appoint assets and income to beneficiaries as they think fit. The trustees will normally be guided by a letter of wishes from the person making the will.

Trusts can of course be set up during the lifetime of the person creating the trust for a variety of reasons, and their nature means that they are more flexible, and that the donor can, if desired, retain more control than would be the case with an absolute gift. They are therefore useful tools in lifetime inheritance tax planning and other forms of financial planning.