Property Protection Trust
Protect Your Home & Assets with a Property Trust
Protecting your property and ensuring it is passed on to your loved ones is important. A Property Protection Trust can provide a flexible and tax-efficient way to achieve this. It can also offer greater control over who inherits your property and how it is managed after you’re gone.
What is a Property Protection Trust?
A Property Protection Trust is a legal arrangement that can help ensure that your property is passed on according to your wishes and provide protection for your assets.
It allows you to place your property into a Trust during your lifetime, with the terms of the trust outlined in your Will. This can help protect your property from various situations such as long-term care costs, potential claims from creditors, and sideways disinheritance.
What's the benefits to Property Protection Trust?
- It is a Trust built into your Will that offers some protection for your property. It could prevent your home from being interfered with by a third party, like being means tested for a Care Home Fee Assessment.
- It is designed for *couples, so when the first partner dies, their share of the property is placed in a Trust for the beneficiaries, usually children or family.
What does it mean for the surviving partner*
If the surviving partner remarries, the deceased’s share of the property is fully protected for the original beneficiaries.
This means that if the surviving partner needs residential care, only their half of the house is regarded as an asset. The half in the Trust is protected from assessment.
The surviving partner has the right to live in the property for the rest of their life. They cannot be evicted by the trustees (your chosen people who manage the Trust).
The surviving partner can sell the house if they wish to and buy another, but any profit will be split equally between them and the trustees. The surviving partner usually controls the Trust with at least one other person, typically another family member.
*A Protective Property Trust is only effective if the tenancy of the property is severed – please see our page about Severance of Tenancy.