Trusts growing popularity is a direct result of their ability to adapt and meet societal needs. To do that, the law that govern and touch trusts is continually changing.
In recent years, the legislative landscape for trusts has changed considerably with the introduction of the Trusts Act 2019 (Act). This statute replaced the Trustee Act 1956 and the Perpetuities Act 1954. Amendments to the Income Tax Act 2007 and the Tax Administration Act 1994 have also transpired. In totality, the new legislation has clearly spelt out trustees duties, strengthened beneficiaries’ rights and increased scrutiny of trustees behaviour.
Whilst the Act has made the law easier to understand, it has undoubtedly increased administration and management requirements. Trustees must now attend to certain matters. To ignore compliance is to invite peril. This is especially so given Inland Revenue’s powers of scrutiny now annually brought to bear on trusts. Fortunately, trust administration and management in timely cost effective ways is what we specialize in.
When we act for clients, we’re conscious they have worked their whole lives to build their wealth and it can take but one event to decimate it. That is why our ultimate goal is to help trusts retain their integrity through the administration and management work we undertake.
Some of the trusts we work with contain a lot of assets and undertake many transactions. Other times, a trust may hold only one asset such as a family home. Irrespective of the value of assets held within a trust or the number of transactions a trust carries out, our clients have the same objective – a desire to protect what their trust holds.
When clients chose to work with us, they know we’ll adopt a collaborative approach to helping them administer and manage their trust. Ultimately this manner of working encourages communication which goes along way to mitigating against a trust failing.
One of our main functions is to help trustees meet their mandatory duties under the Trusts Act 2019. This will amongst other matters, entail trustees satisfying the legislative disclosure presumption to beneficiaries. Alongside this sits the duty Trustees have to account to beneficiaries as well as to Inland Revenue. There are ways to manage the compliance of these duties, which is something we discuss when we hold our annual trustee meetings with our clients. These meetings are mandatory if we are the independent trustee of a trust as they are part of the administrative management of a trust.
At our annual trustee meetings, we cover 31 separate points which relate to a trust’s:
When we carry out the annual trustee meeting we do so in the knowledge that our clients get busy living their lives. That is one of the reasons, clients find our presence invaluable – we keep the administration of the trust on track, ensuring the trust retains its integrity and meets the purpose for which it was established for.