Will Trusts are flexible and can provide for many different family circumstances.
How are they flexible?
Well, your beneficiaries can be given a fixed entitlement or interest. This means that they and your Trustees know from the start what the beneficiaries are entitled to receive. For example, your beneficiaries could be given a right to receive the income arising from the assets held in your trust. This right would usually include the right to occupy your share of the family home.
Where it can be difficult to predict the needs of your beneficiaries, your Trustees can be given the discretion to make payments of capital and income to meet the needs of any one or more of beneficiaries as they see fit. These trusts, known as discretionary trusts, are often used where a parent needs to provide for a disabled child, or perhaps where an adult child has financial problems and it would be unwise to pass capital to them immediately.
Creating a trust in your Will means you can protect different family members in different ways. You can leave your husband a right to live in your share of the family home, whilst ensuring that ultimately that share will pass to your own children, and not your husband’s children.
If you would like any more information about trusts, please get in touch.
T: 07860 772274
E: christine@winterbornelegal.co.uk
WILL TRUSTS AND STATE BENEFITS
If one of your beneficiaries is in receipt of state benefits, he or she could lose those benefits if they receive a legacy from your Will. This could mean that they also lose other support which they received because of the state benefits.
Your beneficiary would then have to use the legacy to support themselves until their funds had diminished to a level where they could claim benefits again.
Meanwhile, eligibility criteria may have changed for support services. Your beneficiary could be left worse off as a result of receiving their legacy.
These problems can be avoided by leaving the beneficiary’s gift to a trust from which they can benefit.
Get in touch if you would like us to explain the types of trust that would be best for your beneficiary.
T: 07860 772274
E: christine@winterbornelegal.co.uk
Whilst Will Trusts can be difficult to understand, all our Wills are written in plain English and are as straightforward as it is possible to make them.
Trusts may offer you protections and benefits that may be otherwise unachievable, so please contact us for a free chat about the use of a trust in your own circumstances. We offer a reasonable fixed cost service for Wills which include trusts.