Protective Property Trusts

Don't let your life's assets be eroded by Long Term Care Fees or your children's inheritance diluted or even lost by careless planning. Consider a Protective Property Trust from Elite Wills for the answer.

The two major Benefits of Protective Property Trusts are:

1. Protect your property from being sold to fund Long Term Care Fees. The Local Authority will seize a person's home to pay for care costs if both of the following are true:-

• That person is worth more than £23,250 (including the value of their home)
  
• They own 100% of their home (excluding the mortgage)

So, if one of you dies and the property falls to the survivor, then both of the above are going to be true. If the survivor then goes into Long Term Care, the home can and will be seized by the Local Authority. Over 70,000 homes are seized every year to fund care home fees.

2. You can protect your share of the property for other beneficiaries (normally the children) should the surviving spouse or partner re-marry, co-habit or have more children after your death.

If this happens their new partner and children will have claim on your estate.

Setting up Trusts in your Will

The idea behind Property Trusts is that, on first death, your share of any property you own is passed into a trust rather than straight to a beneficiary. The Trust is set up to accept the share of the property and, at the same time, a Lifetime Interest is created for the remaining owner of the other share of the property (normally the remaining spouse or partner).This lifetime interest allows the remaining owner to:

• Sell the property if they want to, in conjunction with the trust.
• Buy another property with the proceeds of the sale of the original property. If downsizing, the surplus cash can be split, with the remaining owner receiving 50% of the surplus funds.
• The powers of the Trust allow the remaining spouse/partner to borrow any cash in the Trust, with or without interest, as deemed by the trustees (remember that the remaining spouse/partner would normally be beneficiary and Trustee).
• The property cannot be sold without the permission of the lifetime tenant.
• The lifetime tenant cannot be evicted from the house during their lifetime.
• The ultimate beneficiaries of the Trust would normally be the children, after second death.

How is this achieved?

Your Elite Wills consultant will insert a Protective Property Trust in to your Will so that everything is contained within this one key legal document.

If you own any property as 'Joint Tenants' (the most widespread type of joint ownership), you will need to change the tenancy so the property is owned as 'Tenants in Common, creating the option to split the ownership, usually 50/50. We can organise all this for you with the Land Registry.

The Trust itself is a very simple arrangement with the trustees having control over the running of the trust in line with your Will's instructions. Remember that the remaining spouse/partner would normally be beneficiary and trustee.

Other types of Trust

Protective Property Trusts are the most popular kind of Trusts that we deal with but there are other ways of protecting assets, disabled persons, wayward children and businesses. When it comes to protecting and controlling the distribution of your Estate, Trusts are essential. We can provide a variety of solutions depending on your needs.

For further details on Protective Property Trusts contact us now.