For Individuals & Families Trusts

Ensure your assets are used for a certain purpose and properly managed on behalf of those whom you want to benefit from them.

How do Trusts work?

A Trust is a way of holding assets (money, land, property, investments etc.) to benefit other people. It allows you to specify any assets you want to transfer to someone else (the Trustee), which can then be used to benefit other people (the Beneficiaries).

Done properly, Trusts can also help protect your assets from inheritance tax and residential care costs.

Trustees and Beneficiaries

A Trustee can be a person or company. They are the legal owners of the assets held in trust. There must be at least one Trustee named in a Trust but the people or companies appointed can be changed. A Trustee is often a family member or friend whom you know you can rely on, but some people choose to appoint a bank or firm of solicitors instead.

A Beneficiary is the person, people or organisation for which the assets are held in trust.

Why set up a trust?

A Trust is commonly set up to protect assets for a loved one who is too young to handle their own affairs. Trusts are often also used to protect assets from creditors or tax liability, to benefit charities, to make provisions for your care in later life, to help someone after your death, or to make sure your money is used to look after you, if you cannot look after yourself.

A Trust can be particularly helpful if you have a child or dependant with learning difficulties or disabilities and you’re concerned how they will manage financially after your death.

Are there different types of Trusts?

Yes – depending on your circumstances, you may choose to set up a Family Trust, Disabled Beneficiaries Trust, Personal Injury Trust of Charitable Trust.

Our team can advise you on the best type of Trust depending on your individual circumstances.

What is involved in setting up a Trust?

You appoint a Trustee to be legally responsible for managing your specified assets on behalf of the people you want to receive them (the “Beneficiaries”). You then decide the rules of the Trust.

The Beneficiary must comply with these rules to receive the benefit you have given them.

What are the benefits of setting up a Trust?

Besides allowing you to organise your estate and decide exactly who benefits from your assets, a Trust also allows you to efficiently pass assets down through generations or be used for a specific purpose, helps you protect assets against certain risks such as insolvency, personal overspending or claims from a spouse, provides employee benefits through company shares, pension funds or other methods, can be used as a tax planning tool and allows your assets to be managed in a way that best suits the people you want to benefit from them.

How can we help you?

We can help you set up your Trust, register it with the Revenue, run it on a day-to-day basis and wind it down after it has served its purpose.

The legal wording of a Trust needs to be precise – we have years of experience of this and will help you get it right.

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