Trusts In Transition: Adapting Private Wealth Structures For The Modern World

The way trusts are drafted, in terms of their clarity and use of everyday language, has improved immeasurably over the decades.

The apparent allergy that the trusts draftsmen of old seemed to have had to, for example, the use of punctuation, has largely been cured. Nevertheless, trusts established as a governance framework for assets that are intended to last decades inevitably come under strain when faced with developments unforeseen when they were first made.

Some of the themes we, as professional advisers to trustees, are encountering in our reviews of older trust instruments include out-dated, inflexible and inadequate drafting for the modern world, that leave trustees unclear about their obligations and structures vulnerable to risk and disputes.