Life Interest Wills and Trusts
Life interest trusts are an increasingly common area of estate planning. A life interest trust can offer a solution to the problem of protecting your children's inheritance whilst still providing for your current spouse.
Life interests have a number of uses and one of our solicitors would be happy to discuss these with you and how they may be used in planning your estate.
Second Marriages
If you have remarried following bereavement or divorce, and have children from a previous marriage, it is possible to ensure the financial security of your current spouse whilst still protecting your children's eventual inheritance.
With a standard Will, if you leave everything to your new partner your assets would become theirs when you die. When they die those assets would form part of their own estate and would then be passed to their beneficiaries, who may be their own children, potentially leaving your own children without any inheritance.
This risk can be avoided with a 'Life interest Will'. The family home is a good example of where this can be used. You may wish to leave the property to your children eventually, but still enable your current partner to live in it after you have died.
With a life interest trust you can give your partner a life interest in the property, which means that after your death they can continue to live in the property until they die (or remarry if you wish), at which point the property passes to your children or your other chosen beneficiaries.
In this way you can protect both your partner and eventual beneficiaries.
The benefits of a Life Interest Trust
- You control the ultimate destination of your assets whilst still enabling your partner to benefit from those assets.
- Care home fee mitigation - assets held within a life interest trust are ring fenced from your spouse’s assets and cannot be taken into account when assessing your partner for care home fees, thus protecting the assets.
- Protected against bankruptcy - assets held in the trust cannot be taken in the event of your spouse's bankruptcy as they have no right over the capital.
What assets can form part of a Life Interest Trust?
- Property.
- Cash – your spouse can benefit from the income generated by cash assets whilst the capital itself is protected by the trust.
Contact us for more information or to arrange a consultation.