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Family Probate Trust

By putting a Family Probate Trust in place you are ensuring that your loved ones receive your Property in the quickest, most convenient way possible at the appropriate time in the future; whilst protecting you in your lifetime.

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Family Probate Trust by Town & Country Law

Your Family Probate Trust protects your assets and puts you in control:

  • No need for probate for any assets in the Trust. This could save your beneficiaries thousands of pounds in unnecessary costs and delays.
  • The owner (Settlor) of the Trust always maintains control of their Trust.
  • Beneficiaries inherit quickly and hassle-free.
  • Prevents sideways disinheritance.
  • Protects the Trust assets for your Beneficiaries in the event of a divorce, bankruptcy or other unexpected events.
  • Children inherit at the right time.
  • Flexibility to move home or sell your property as you choose.
  • Each Spouse grants the surviving Spouse a ‘Right to Reside’.
  • Beneficiaries only inherit the Trust after all the Settlors of the Trust have deceased.
  • There are absolutely no ongoing costs or charges for this Trust. Following the death of the Settlors (owners of the Trust) there are no additional costs to selling the property.

We reviewed our Trust instruments with a leading KC (Leading Silk, Tier 1 in Trusts and Tax) to ensure that we bring our Clients the very best services.

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Download our FREE Family Probate Trust guide...

You can download our free Family Probate Trust guide to find out all the information and guidance you might need.

Download our Family Probate Trust Guide

Town & Country Law offer a Family Probate Trust.

Our Family Probate Trust is established in your lifetime and falls into the category of an Interest in Possession Trust. The Trust will have a Settlor, Trustees and Beneficiaries as well as a Life Tenant.

The primary purpose of this trust is to speed up the process of inheritance to your beneficiaries, and to avoid unexpected things happening in that process.

Many of our clients have experienced difficulties in dealing with a loved ones probate. Time delays and high costs being two of their biggest issues. The Family Probate Trust can assist in this, as the Property placed in to the Trust will not have to go through probate on the Settlors death. Instead the Settlors death will trigger the Trustees to act and distribute the Trust Fund to the nominated beneficiaries in accordance with the Trust.

The Trustees of the Trust will be the legal owners of the property, and the beneficial owners are the beneficiaries or any person with a life interest.

Being a Trustee does not mean that the person owns the property as part of their estate. Therefore, being a Trustee should not cause any problems in relation to Stamp Duty or buying a first home.

Yes. When making a lifetime gift of any kind, whether this be a transfer of property or assets to a trust or a large gift to a friend or family member you must always consider whether you may fall foul of the rules on Deliberate Deprivation of Assets. This could relate to the need for Long Term Residential Care in the future, if you are aware you may be made bankrupt and the asset would form part of your estate or if you are going through a divorce and a financial settlement is yet to be reached.

In any of these scenarios it could be claimed that you have deliberately deprived your estate of an asset, whether this is to avoid creditors or paying care home fees, action may be taken against you or your trustees. We can of course provide advice on this.

The law society has published guidance on this, and we quote directly from that here to answer this question:

“Long-term care
If you need long-term care and you benefit from a trust, your local authority will take this into account when assessing your circumstances.
If you’re entitled to the income of a trust only, the capital (lump sum) will not be considered.

You may be able to put your property in trust before going into care, so it’s not considered to be owned by you and is not used to fund your care. However, your local authority may challenge this if it can show that your main reason for putting the property in trust was to avoid care costs.”

Further, the Care Act 2014 and Annex E must be considered for your individual circumstances when considering a lifetime trust.

This is something that all clients who use a lifetime trust in their estate planning need to consider and where applicable, we will do this with you.

If you believe, reasonably, that establishing a Family Probate Trust would fall foul of these rules, then you may wish to consider planning your estate using a Town & Country Law Protective Property Trust Will instead.

​If you require further guidance on the legislation, please contact us.

These services may include reserved legal activity which means that some legal work must be undertaken by an authorised person in accordance with the Legal Services Act 2007 and authorised persons must be authorised by an approved regulator who will ensure that the regulatory obligations are met. Such work is referred to as “reserved legal activity” and entitles clients to specific protections. For the benefit of our clients, we have arrangements in place with a firm of solicitors we work very closely with who we will introduce you too. You can read more here.

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