What we do
Trusts
Where a trust is already in the structure, or a provider has proposed one, the first question is which line carries control and which carries benefit.
What the work is
Reading the trust against the structure it sits inside. A trust deed can be impeccable and still be the wrong instrument in the wrong place, because the question a structure chart asks is not the question a deed answers.
The recurring problems are the same. A settlor who has retained powers that make the trust transparent for tax where it matters. A protector whose consent rights are so wide that the trustee is not really a trustee. A trust holding shares in a company whose own constitution contradicts the trust's distribution provisions. A structure where nobody has written down what happens when the trustee retires.
Where the boundary sits
We are not a licensed trustee and do not act as one. Trusteeship is a regulated activity carried out by licensed firms under their own regulators. Drafting and trust law advice are handled by the regulated firm instructed to do it, to our brief. What we do is the structural half: how the trust sits in the wider arrangement, and what the instruction to that firm should say.