Protects — the family home & the vulnerable
A trust separates who benefits from money or property from who controls it. That one idea solves problems an ordinary gift can't touch: protecting a child's inheritance from a divorce, housing a second spouse without disinheriting your children, or providing for a disabled loved one without destroying their support. We use trusts where they genuinely help — and tell you plainly when they wouldn't.
Three roles. The settlor creates the trust and puts assets into it. The trustees legally hold and manage those assets, bound by duties to act properly. The beneficiaries are the people it all exists for. The power of the arrangement is that benefiting and controlling are split — so a beneficiary can be supported without being handed a cheque they could lose to a divorce, a creditor, a bad influence, or their own age and inexperience.
Trusts come in two broad settings: written into your will, taking effect when you die; or created during your lifetime. Most of what families need is done through the will.
Life interest trusts — the blended family's answer. Your share of the home or estate is held so your spouse or partner can live in the property and take the income for life — and when they die, your share passes to your chosen beneficiaries, typically your children. It's the honest solution to the second-marriage dilemma: the survivor is housed and provided for, and your children's inheritance can't be redirected by a later will, a remarriage, or simple drift. Without it, everything usually passes outright to the survivor — and what happens after that is entirely out of your hands.
Property protection trusts. A life interest trust applied specifically to your share of the family home, usually paired with changing joint ownership to tenants in common so each of you has a share your wills can direct. Couples use these to make sure at least half the house ultimately reaches the children, whatever later life brings.
Discretionary trusts. The most flexible form: trustees you choose decide, within the class of beneficiaries you define, who receives what and when. Nobody has a fixed entitlement — which is exactly the point when a beneficiary's marriage looks shaky, their finances are chaotic, they're vulnerable to pressure, or circumstances simply can't be predicted decades ahead. You leave your trustees a letter of wishes explaining how you'd like the discretion exercised.
Trusts for young beneficiaries. Without planning, an 18-year-old inherits outright — everything, at once. A trust in your will can hold funds to a later age, release them in stages, or give trustees discretion, while still allowing money out earlier for education, housing or genuine need.
This is some of the most important work we do. Leave money outright to a disabled or vulnerable person and you can do real harm with the best intentions: means-tested benefits and local authority care support can stop, and the person may be unable to manage the money — or be exposed to those who'd manage it for them.
A properly drafted trust — usually discretionary in form, or a dedicated disabled person's trust where the beneficiary qualifies — means the money tops up their life rather than replacing their support: equipment, therapies, holidays, comfort, opportunity. Trusts for qualifying disabled beneficiaries also receive special, more favourable tax treatment. And just as important, the trust outlives you — it's how parents answer the question that keeps them awake: who looks after them when we're gone? We help you choose trustees for the long haul and write the letter of wishes that guides them.
A trust is only as good as its trustees, so choosing them — family, trusted friends, or a mix — is part of the design, along with replacement provisions for the decades ahead. Trusts also have their own tax rules: some must be registered with HMRC's Trust Registration Service, and discretionary trusts have particular inheritance tax treatment. We build this into the advice, working alongside your accountant or our sister firm where the tax picture needs regulated financial advice — so the structure works in practice, not just on paper.
Free consultation, online or at your home. If you don't need one, we'll say so.
Trusts
No — that's their reputation, not their reality. The most common trusts we draft protect a share of an ordinary family home, hold an inheritance for a teenager, or provide for a disabled family member. What decides whether you need one isn't the size of your estate but the shape of your family: second marriages, young children, vulnerable beneficiaries and family businesses are what call for trusts.
Quite the opposite — the life interest exists precisely to guarantee their right to live there for life, and usually to move house if they wish, with the trust following into the new property. What it prevents is your share being redirected away from your children afterwards. Protection for both sides is the whole design.
Done properly, that's exactly what it protects against. Money held at the trustees' discretion generally isn't counted as the beneficiary's own capital for means-testing, so support continues while the trust adds quality of life on top. Done badly — an outright gift, or a poorly chosen trust type — benefits can stop. This is specialist drafting, and it's a core part of our work.
People with sound judgement who are likely to be around for the duration — often one from the family for knowledge of the beneficiary, plus another for balance. Attorneys, executors and trustees can be the same people but needn't be; each role suits different strengths. We'll help you think it through, and build in replacements for the years ahead.
Many trusts must now be registered with HMRC's Trust Registration Service, and trusts have their own income, capital gains and inheritance tax rules depending on type. None of that should put you off a trust that solves a real problem — it simply means the structure needs setting up with the administration in view, which is part of our advice rather than an afterthought.