Episode 528: Ask the Experts – a Monthly Q&A with Sintons’ WTE Team – Episode 49.

And I'll start with the first one, which is who should I choose as my trustees? Really good question because a lot of it is subjective and it's something that you should take a lot of care in.

When you set up a trust, it could go on for a long time.

And so you want to make sure that you've got the right trustees to sort of take the helm and lead that trust through that period.

so who are the trustees so the trustees are the people who are legally responsible for looking after the trust assets they administer the trust and they carry out its terms for the benefits of the beneficiaries so you set the terms as the person setting up the trust and then they carry it out so depending on the trust the trustees might need to manage investments for example if you've placed shares in the trust They might need to deal with property, if the trust asset is your home or business property or something like that.

they'll need to make distributions most likely so by distribution, what I mean is they get assets from the trust and they give them out to the beneficiaries.

They will need to keep accounts as well, so they need to keep good records.

of what the trust assets are.

And if there's a lot of transactions in and out the trust, so let's say they're paying out beneficiaries, they're getting income that's coming in from the shares, then they need to give you a good record of what's coming in, what's coming out, just so everyone knows what's going on.

They also might need to complete tax reports, tax returns.

They can obviously instruct a professional to do this for them.

But let's say you've got a trust where, again, you've got some shares in there and they're generating a lot of interest, which is very good, but also we need to account for that interest to HMRC.

You wouldn't really get that in a trust where it's your home and you live in that home because you're not generating an income from that.

So the role does carry a lot of responsibility.

Trustees owe a list of duties to the beneficiaries.

They must act within their powers given by the trust.

So usually you give them quite a lot of powers just to make sure that they can do what they need to do.

They need to avoid conflicts of interest as well.

And they need to just exercise good care, good skill when they're carrying out the terms of the trust.

So it's not really something to take lightly.

You know, some trustees might be very relaxed about it, and that's great if they feel comfortable with the task.

But there is a lot to consider.

So a suitable trustee.

I would say it needs to be trustworthy as in the name.

So they need to be, you know, you need to trust them.

And that's where that name comes from.