The Family Asset
Protection Trust
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Introducing Family Asset Protection Trusts.
The proven way to safeguard assets for you and your family’s future.
- Take advantage of a service that makes sense for everybody
- Keep control of your most valuable assets
- Protect your property for the benefit of your loved ones
- Protect your assets from bankruptcy, creditors and strangers
- Save on Inheritance Tax for future generations*
- Use a product with a proven pedigree dating back centuries
- Preserve your wealth for your family
- Save on future Probate costs*
*Discuss the applicable savings with your consultant
There may be trouble ahead…
Nobody likes to think about it, but when you pass away, what happens to your assets can be uncertain. Indeed, without adequate provision, their fate can pass out of your hands altogether.
As a professional Estate Planning company, there are three ways {{name}} can help you plan for the future, to safeguard your assets and family:
- A Will, which helps to determine who gets what when you die.
- Lasting Power of Attorney, where you appoint trusted individual(s) to manage your Financial and Health & Welfare affairs, if you can’t do it yourself.
- However, on their own, these measures can often not be enough. They provide only limited protection for your estate, both when you die and while you’re still alive. Which is why we also recommend another key tool — a Family Asset Protection Trust (FAPT).
Why a Family Asset Protection Trust (FAPT)?
Even the most sophisticated Will can only give you limited control over how beneficiaries can utilise your assets to protect from issues like sideways disinheritance, divorce and bankruptcy. Essentially, a Will only applies when you’re dead, and offers no protection against these threats to your estate beforehand.
In contrast, when you transfer your assets into an FAPT while you’re still alive, you protect them for the rest of your life and beyond. The benefits of an FAPT are simply too strong to ignore.
YOU KEEP CONTROL OF YOUR ASSETS
Placing your assets in a Trust doesn’t mean you lose control. Far from it, because the Trust has Beneficiaries and Trustees, and you (the Settlor) will usually be both. As the Settlor you can appoint or remove Trustees while you are alive and have capacity, which gives you complete control during your lifetime.
Also, using a Trust is much more preferable to transferring property directly to your children, which can be a minefield. (Please speak to your adviser to understand the consequences of passing your residential property to your children while you are alive).
Your Control
Whatever you can do today, before your house is placed in the Trust, is exactly the same once the house is in the Trust:
- You can sell your home
- You can buy a new residential property
- You can access any money that is left over from the sale
You choose the Trustees
As the Settlor, you choose the Trustees of your FAPT — those people who make the decisions. Normally you will be a Trustee yourself. And rest assured, even if you lose mental capacity, important decisions will be taken by people you have chosen personally.
It’s for everybody
An FAPT can be useful to any adult with assets and the mental capacity to enter into a contract. It makes little difference what your assets are worth, or whether you’re single, a couple, co-habitees, same sex couples or widow/ers. Your {{name}} Consultant will be happy to explain how you can best take advantage of the considerable benefits the FAPT provides.
It’s long-lasting
An FAPT can last for up to 125 years – and possibly longer, in certain circumstances. This is one of the reasons why it’s such a vital planning tool for future generations of your family.
It protects against sideways disinheritance
After your death, if your partner subsequently remarries, your assets could end up going to a complete stranger’s family. However, if your assets are already in an FAPT, the new spouse isn’t a Beneficiary of the Trust, so they will not benefit from it. Assets only ever pass to your nominated Beneficiaries as defined in the Trust document.
It gives added protection
Later in life, your Trustees could use the Trust’s assets to help fund costs, either by renting or selling your property. You can also use an FAPT to protect the assets of a beneficiary with learning difficulties or disabilities, without prejudicing their entitlement to state benefits and/or support.
It protects from bankruptcy
As long as you’re not in financial difficulties now, should you get into trouble later, an FAPT can shelter your assets, or those of beneficiaries, from creditors.
It cuts tax bills
The FAPT isn’t designed to save you Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax, however it could still save future generations of your family very significant amounts in Inheritance Tax. {{name}} can provide several examples of such scenarios. As we are neither accountants nor financial advisors, we always recommend you seek advice from suitably qualified people.
What about the alternatives?
In truth, there are no alternatives to an FAPT that offer anything like the same protection. Transferring property to your children directly can be very dangerous. What if they got divorced, became bankrupt or even passed away before you? At the very least, not having an FAPT could mean large Inheritance Tax bills, but more real is the possibility that their share of your home could easily pass into the hands of others.
Do you want your children to inherit, or someone else’s children?
You CAN contest a Will, you CANNOT contest a Trust
Why {{name}}?
At {{name}}, we use our extensive Estate Planning experience to make sure you get the very best advice for your future and that of your loved ones. Our knowledge of Wills, Trusts, Lasting Powers of Attorney and Probate combines proactive advice with a unique understanding of the pitfalls of organising your estate.
Our service helps you protect the value of your estate and makes sure that often unforeseen and unplanned events, such as divorce or bankruptcy, do not see its value become unnecessarily diminished. The personal service we offer is designed to help you plan for the future and ensure that your Will or Trust allows your beneficiaries to inherit according to your wishes.
Remember, you’ve worked your whole life to accumulate these assets.
We use accredited software to produce your Wills & Lasting Powers of Attorney, and we have a panel of solicitors who produce the Family Asset Protection Trust for you.
While being specialists in the field of Estate Planning, {{name}} are not tax advisors or financial advisers. In appropriate cases we recommend you seek the advice of appropriately qualified professionals.
Here to safeguard your family
and your family’s future
Talk to one of our professional Estate Planners to find out how we can help you.