finalising my mums estate

queenbea

I am joint executor with my sister of my mums estate, I have completed the probate process and the sale of my mums estate is imminent. I have not used a solicitor in these matters but need help as to what I do with the £10,000 my mum left her 3 grandsons aged 16, 9 and 6. I understand it has to be left in trust until they are 18 but am not sure what this means. Is it any bank account for them or a specific trust that I have to open.

little_miss_muppet_face

Does it say the money has to be left in trust,

I ask this because our family member has recently left each of the kids money also, they are teens and 1 under 10, no mention of trusts so we can just open an account for them, or indeed just hand them the money.

getmore4less

Children under 18 cannot just inherit the money the default is a trust(even if the will does not say so)

The executors are the default trustees.
The terms of the trust determine what can happen to the money, often this will allow for distribution but the trustees have to be careful as they can be sued by the child when they reach 18 if they feel the trustee did not act correctly.

little_miss_muppet_face

getmore4less wrote: »

Children under 18 cannot just inherit the money the default is a trust(even if the will does not say so)

The executors are the default trustees.
The terms of the trust determine what can happen to the money, often this will allow for distribution but the trustees have to be careful as they can be sued by the child when they reach 18 if they feel the trustee did not act correctly.

well we were given the option of opening an account for them, which we did. and the money is in there, so i dont know if thats a trust, youngest allready had a child trust fund so theres went into that. DIdnt realise they couldnt touch it til 18 (well i knew the CTF was 18)

queenbea

That's what I thought but how do I put this in trust, is their a specific trust account that I have to open for the money to be put into, or can it be any kind of child's bank account and I ensure that they cannot get the money until they are 18? Help I'm getting myself confused!!

Crabapple

With that amount of money you don't need to do anything too onerous. Find an account that pays a reasonable amount of interest (admittedly not easy these days but as you can tie it up in a bond for a fixed number of years that helps) and you can be noted on as Trustee, some of the building societies do simple ones. National Savings bonds always used to be a great option but they don't sell them any more.

You really don't need to do anything more formal than that despite the word 'trust'. If it was much larger amounts of money you might be looking at needing to take investment advice and perhaps even reporting to HMRC but really the 'Trust' here is just to hold the money safely until the children are old enough to inherit.

getmore4less

Don't get scared but worth a read---

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/trusts/index.htm

little_miss_muppet_face

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