Inheritance help

dresdendave

Has the family "friend" been enjoying a lavish lifestyle over the past three years by any chance?

euronorris

If they didn't invest it, then they have failed in their duties as trustees under the Trustee Act 1925:


"Duty of trustees
• Having established that the requisite investment power exists, trustees must then consider whether it is appropriate to exercise that power.
• Trustees have an overriding duty to exercise their investment powers with care and prudence, seeking to establish a suitable level of risk and diversification across the entire portfolio. Section 4 of the Trustee Act 2000 sets out the standard investment criteria which trustees must consider, both when making an investment decision and also when reviewing investments from time to time.
• In addition Trustees must review the trust investments from time to time and consider, having regard to the standard investment criteria, whether they should be varied.
• Importantly, trustees have a duty to balance the interests of different beneficiaries and to act fairly when making investment decisions which could have different outcomes for beneficiaries with competing interests. Therefore, trustees must have regard to this duty when deciding to what extent they will invest for income returns or capital growth in circumstances where the beneficiaries entitled to income and capital respectively are different."


An ISA cannot be held in a trust, so I have no idea why they even mentioned it as an option.


Although taxes were paid on the sale of the property etc, IF the trustees had met their investment duties and invested it accordingly, there would likely have been other taxes that would have arisen between then and now - dividends, capital gains, interest etc - though this would have been dependant on the type of trust established.


This is all sounding more than a little suspect, and I would definitely recommend getting some legal advice - at the very least, the trustees have failed in their duty to invest and the spending power of the capital will have eroded due to the effects of inflation as a result.

macman

The solicitors would have had your son's address. Has it changed since he was 15?
The trust would need to be dissolved once he reached 18, so they should have initiated contact.