Trust Your Trustee and Your Trust Administration Services

Filed under: offshore

Forming a trust is only the first step. Once your trust is formed it must be administered to accomplish its purpose and to provide acceptable benefits to the beneficiaries.
Improper trust administration can result in the trust being disregarded or “pierced” and its assets and those of the principals can be attached by creditors/claimants.
A Trust, whether onshore or offshore has a number of component parts, several of which have already been mentioned, but for the sake of completeness, we will summarize them again here. In essence these are very simple and straightforward, although the Deed itself is a complex, legal document and most only be written and modified by someone with detailed, in depth, understanding of the trust laws of the chose jurisdiction, The major components of a trust are:

The Settlor – This is the person who formulates the trust and who settles his assets into the trust.
Deed of Trust (or Trust Document) – This is the legal trust document itself and contains all the permutations and combination of what the trust and its controlling Trustees can and cannot do according to both the wishes of the Settlor and the laws if the jurisdictions where the trust is written.
Trust Property – Or the Assets, which the Settlor places into the trust from time to time. Depending on the type of the trust, settled assets do not need to be specified in the initial Deed of Trust but may be added later.
Trustee(s) – The name individual, individuals or company appointed by the Settlor to administer his wishes according to the Deed of Trust. Frequently a professional Trust Agent within the jurisdiction of the trust, the Trustee has absolute control over the trust assets.
Protector – A Settlor can name a third-party individual to “oversee” a trust to ensure that the Trustee is administering the trust according to his wishes.
Letter of Wishes – A Settlor can write a Letter of Wishes alongside a Deed of Trust which spells out exactly what action he wishes the Trustee to take under differing sets of circumstances. This Letter is totally private between the Settlor and Trustee and wishlist not legally binding, is an excellent guide for a Trustee to follow, especially if the Settlor is no longer in contact with the Trustee for any extended period.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.