Throughout your life you will accumulate assets such as the family home, pensions and savings. Your Will only comes into force after you pass and provides no protection for your assets while you are alive. A Family asset trust is specifically designed to protect your assets while you are alive and provides peace of mind knowing they can be passed on for generations to come.

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Example one 

Jeff and Doreen have worked hard all their lives, they have a property valued at £300,000, savings of £100,000 and various other investments worth £50,000. They wrote a will leaving everything to their daughter, Lesley, and hoped it would provide financial stability for her in the years after their deaths. However, shortly after Lesley inherits £450,000 from her parents’ estate her marriage is dissolved and £225,000 of Lesley’s inheritance is now with Jeff and Doreen’s ex-son-in-law.

 

If Jeff and Doreen had placed their assets in a Family Asset Trust and named Lesley as the beneficiary, then Lesley would have retained all the assets in the trust. Her ex-husband would have no stake or claim to Lesley’s inheritance.

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Example two

Barry and Judith have assets of £600,000 and they write a will leaving this to their daughter Janet. Janet and her husband have property, savings and other investments valued at £500,000. Barry and Judith’s estate is added to Janet’s assets after they die, and Janet’s children will now have an Inheritance of £1.1 million which means unknowingly Barry and Judith’s Will started a chain of events leading to their grandchildren being left with an Inheritance Tax liability.

 

Barry and Judith could have placed their assets in a Family Asset Trust and with the Family Trust holding the contents, they would have avoided the inheritance tax issue they created for their grandchildren.

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With A Family Asset Trust, the owners, or settlors, of the Trust nominate the people who are to benefit from the assets held within the trust.