A Protective Property Trust (PPT) is one of the most popular trusts in Wills today. It gives another person known as the Life Tenant (usually a spouse or partner) a right to live in the Property for the rest of their life, or for a specified period of time.If the tenant wishes to move, the trustees have the power to sell the property and use the sale proceeds to purchase a substitute property for the life tenant to live in. Any additional proceeds of sale will remain in Trust and the income from the funds will be paid to the Life Tenant. Powers to advance capital can also be included.At the end of the Trust, the property can pass to other beneficiaries (usually children).
WHY USE A PPT?
The most common use of a PPT is between spouses or civil partners who grant each other a life interesting the family home, and then provide that their share in the home will pass to their children at the end of the Trust, ensuring that the children will inherit.
Gifting the share in the home to the surviving spouse outright in the Will (Joint Tenants) allowing it to pass to them by survivorship can cause a number of problems.
If the survivor remarries, the house could be passed to their new spouse under a new Will/by Intestacy or alternatively , if this new marriage ends in divorce, the house could form part of the divorce settlement.
A PPT will ensure that the children (or other chosen beneficiaries) will inherit the deceased’s share. This is done by changing the way the Property is owned to “Tenants in Common”.A surviving spouse could be subject to long term care fees or bankruptcy in the future. If the deceased puts their share of the property into a PPT on first death, that share will be owned by the Trust rather than the spouse outright and is therefore sheltered from the surviving spouse from potentially disinheriting them.When clients own a relatively large house, the power to downsize can be useful as the Life Tenant may not be able to cope with a property of that size as they grow older.
People are sometimes not comfortable with the idea that a surviving spouse could form a new relationship and the new relationship:could benefit from living in the property. Provision can be made however for the PPT to end and the share distributed to the beneficiaries if the spouse or civil partner remarries, enters a new civil partnership or starts living with another person as if they were married /civil partners.
The ownership of the house is changed from Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common,Where each owner owns a percentage of the House. So when the first owner dies , their share is left in Trust for their beneficiaries,The house is protected from also the potential threat of it having to be sold to pay care home fees.
Full range of trusts include:
- Parental Trust
- Discretionary Trust
- Vulnerable Persons Trust
- Family Protection Trust