“Trust busting” is the term often used to describe instances where a court finds in favour of a claimant trying to access trust assets. Here, though, I do not want to talk about “trust busting”. Instead I want to bust some trust myths. There has been a lot of media coverage recently as a result of the new Trusts Act passing, much of which has suggested that trusts are now ineffective. This approach is regrettable and founded on a number of myths.

Myth One: Trusts Don’t Provide Effective Asset Protection

While there have been some notable relationship property cases where claimants successfully accessed trust property, you have to look “under the hood” of those cases to truly understand their impact. Often the trust deed or the trust admin (or both) are a shambles.

Sometimes the court is seeking to redress a huge relationship property imbalance. None of this means that a properly constituted and administered trust will not stand up to challenge. The bottom line is there is great value in having the insurance policy of a trust owning valuable assets.

Myth Two: There Are No Benefits In Employing A Trust

Trusts are often employed for estate planning purposes, which is a point overlooked in the alarmist media commentary. Where assets are owned personally, they form part of your personal estate on death. Your personal estate can be subject to challenge, e.g. by creditors, an ex-spouse, aggrieved family members or caregivers. On the other hand, where assets are held by a trust they are insulated from exposure to these types of claims.

While few people employ trusts for tax reasons, they can be effective in splitting income amongst beneficiaries to reach an efficient tax outcome. Another point often made by media experts is that trusts provide no benefit when it comes to eligibility for the residential care subsidy. But they generally place you in no worse position, and if, for example, you receive an inheritance directly into a trust, then that is not included in asset means testing for the residential care subsidy.

Myth Three: Beneficiary Demands

One of the most notable aspects of the new law is a default requirement to contact beneficiaries of the trust and advise them of their standing as a beneficiary. From there, beneficiaries can seek information from trustees. However, they do not have a right to demand distributions from the trust. Furthermore, there can be reasons for trustees to not disclose information to beneficiaries, eg if there is an expectation that disclosure will have a negative impact on the beneficiary or relationships within the family. While it is true that new rules are designed to make trustees more accountable to beneficiaries – which is as things should be – they do give scope for trustees to consider a wide range of factors before deciding what information will be disclosed and to whom.

Myth Four: Onerous New Law

While the new law includes some new duties, such as this default duty to contact beneficiaries and a duty to retain trust information, for the most part these are actions that a prudent trustee should be undertaking anyway.

If anything, complying with the Act will ensure that trusts are more robust moving forward, enforcing good practice by trustees. There are also positive features of the new law, including some flexibilities to alter aspects of the deed in circumstances where previously you may have had to go to court to do this. The maximum lifespan of a trust can also potentially be extended.

Conclusion

We still see significant value in employing trusts as part of a robust asset protection and estate planning structure. I find much of the media commentary to be alarmist and skin deep, ignoring many of the advantages of accumulating your hard-earned capital in trust ownership over time.

We recently ran a webinar on the new trust rules, which you can view here if you would like to know more: https://www.gra.co.nz/resource... seminar-downloads.