A Fine Balance: Two Recent Cases From The Cayman Islands

This article is a summary of a talk delivered at the Legal Week Trusts and Estates Litigation Conference in March 2007.

No offshore jurisdiction that wishes to be taken seriously will hold itself out as the ideal place to shelter ill-gotten gains or to squirrel away assets behind opaque legislation. However, the trust is the quintessential "asset protection" device in the sense that it has been used successfully for centuries as a way of preserving and planning estates. By "asset protection" in this context, I mean to refer to the legitimate uses of offshore trusts for estate preservation and planning which will attract growing interest with the emergence of new wealth. The history of this success in personal estate planning has led to innovative commercial uses, which have been given statutory life in, for example, the STAR legislation in the Cayman Islands and the VISTA legislation in the BVI. The efficacy of Cayman Islands trusts, and their increasing popularity,