Trusts Solicitors
If you have dependants who rely on you for financial support and other types of practical assistance, you should give careful thought as to how they would be provided for if you were no longer around.
Trusts are legal entities that can help protect assets for your beneficiaries. They can be used in your Will to help you plan what should happen to your estate after your death or they can be set up during your lifetime.
Trusts are useful for many different reasons. For example, a trust can help provide for young, vulnerable or disabled beneficiaries or for whole families or even charities. Trusts may also be useful for business owners or those with agricultural interests as part of their estate planning.
However, trust law is complex and a number of issues can arise during the administration of trusts. These include tax and other regulation and compliance requirements, changes to the trustees, disputes and eventually winding up the trust. We can help and support you with these matters as they arise.
Our team is experienced in dealing with all aspects of drafting trusts and trust administration, from dealing with the most complex trust arrangements to the more straightforward. We can offer a wide range of services tailored to your needs, whether you want to create a trust, require help when acting as a trustee or need advice if you are the beneficiary of a trust.
Our clear, reliable trust services
- Advice on specific trust issues, as and when required
- Advising trustees
- Advising beneficiaries
- Trust management
- Professional trustee service
- Drafting trusts
- Changes of trustees (addition, removal or retirement of trustees)
- Trust disputes
- Taxation of trusts
- Drafting a bespoke Declaration of trust
- Support with the Trust Registration Service
- Fixed fees
- Experienced lawyers who are members of Solicitors for the Elderly, STEP and the Law Society Wills and Inheritance Quality Scheme (WIQS)
How we can help you with creating and managing trusts
We can assist trustees with the ongoing management of a trust. We are on hand to assist with issues as they arise and help you with any necessary decision making. We can also liaise with other professional advisors should you require additional expertise in relation to, for example, financial or accountancy advice.
As trusts can exist for a long time, it is not uncommon for disputes to occur between trustees and beneficiaries. These are often be difficult as the trustees and beneficiaries can be family members. We have a specialist team who work in relation to solving such trust disputes in the most practical way possible. We pride ourselves on pragmatism and compassion in finding the path forward without necessarily involving costly litigation.
A Personal Injury Trust (also known as a Compensation Protection Trust) is a way of managing compensation received due to a personal injury. By placing your compensation in a Personal Injury Trust, it is ring-fenced so that it is not linked to your other personal capital.
For more information on Personal Injury Trusts please visit our Court of Protection page.
This type of trust is often used in relation to property ownership. A declaration of trust can be helpful when an unmarried couple move into a property together and wish to draw up an agreement about how the bills and maintenance of the property is to be split as well as how any proceeds of sale should be divided in the event of a relationship breakdown. It can also be used by parents when lending money to a child to help them to buy a home, protecting their investment and making it clear how the loan is to be treated in the event of the property being sold or on the death of the parents.
We can draft a declaration of trust for you to ensure your arrangements are clearly set out to avoid any doubt in the future.
For a fixed fee, our legal experts can check your trust documents to see if it needs to be registered with the Trust Regitration Service. If so, then we can register the trust, or estate, with on your behalf. Read our TRS Guide for more information.
How much does it cost to set up a trust?
This will depend on your personal requirements. For creating a straightforward trust, we may be able to agree a fixed fee to cover all of the work involved, while for more complex trusts and trust management, we will usually work according to a set hourly rate.
Book a consultation with our trust solicitors in Plymouth
Get in touch to discuss how we can help you by calling 01752 643978.