PROTECTING YOUR FAMILY

Mr and Mrs Harrison

Mr and Mrs Harrison are both into their late 60s. They have a 46 year old daughter with severe physical and mental handicaps. She requires round the clock attention which involves obvious hard work but also many moments that are special. Their daughter requires various equipment to help her parents move her around her home including specialist chairs and hoists. She also requires specialist respite care with a team of people who have built a relationship with her and understand her needs just as well as her Mum and Dad . At a recent meeting Mr and Mrs Harrison at their home they expressed concerns about what would happen to their daughters care and needs if as parents they pre deceased her. Their concerns were based around who would make both care and financial decisions on their daughter’s behalf and deal with her inherited estate. Who would provide the protection? To their daughter as a beneficiary. We discussed that a simple will leaving everything to their daughter would mean she benefits absolutely the inheritance, meaning the inheritance will form part of her estate. Mr and Mrs Harrison expressed concerns at this because their daughter does not have the capacity to deal with the inheritance. or her ongoing care .I explained that using beneficiary protection and bloodline planning with a trust would elevate these concerns . . On the second death the assets would be directed to the trust and using two trusted trustees. These Trustees would have a duty of care on the trust, and would be able to make sure that their daughter’s needs are met financially in the future. Care needed to be taken on the choice of Trustees in this case so it was decided that Mrs Harrisons Brothers would act as trustees because they understood their niece’s needs after being heavily involved in her life as family. This will also involve Independent Financial advice once the trust is set up on second death to insure the inheritance is invested wisely and tax efficiently. This coupled with the will forming part of the overall integral planning would provide the protective frame work Mr and Mrs Harrison were looking for . A further meeting was arranged with the trustees, where I explained their responsibilities as trustees. We provided them with literature that outlines trustee’s roles and they both agreed along with Mr and Mrs Harrison that the bloodline planning and protective trust framework met their concerns. At this point we completed the initial application forms with Mr and Mrs Harrison and these were sent off to our Trust and legal partners. They produced the draft wills and trust documents along with the letter of wishes and posted them out to Mr AND Mrs Harrison to read through and quality check. Along with a full set of guidance notes and help from myself at TUTIS Mr and Mrs Harrison were able to sign these and return them so the final legal documents could be prepared for signatures. A short time later the final legal documents and wills were produced and signed by Mr and Mrs Harrison along with their trustees and witnessed accordingly with the whole process taking approximately 12 to 15 weeks

"David listened to our concerns, looked at the situation and came back to us with a solution which we were very satisfied with as it takes care of our daughter’s financial interests after we are both deceased."