Winding up a discretionary trust

fdb66

My father died recently, and after all the funeral bills etc there is about £1500 left which goes into a discretionary trust. I'm a trustee of the discretionary trust and my sibilings are beneficiaries, and the trust runs until a deed is drawn up to close it. As there is so little money involved we just want to distribute the money and wind the trust up.

Can anyone advise on what is needed to wind the trust up? If we just distribute the money leaving nothing then what is the practical difference between having a deed to say it's wound up and not having a deed?

Keep_pedalling

With such a small sum involved just distribute to the beneficiaries no need to formally wind anything up. 

HobgoblinBT

Have you carried out a Google search for “winding up a trust deed”. Sometimes you can obtain a suitable wording without paying a solicitor £400 per hour to get the appropriate specimen wording.  

You will also need to confirm the winding up of the trust with the U.K. gov website and may need to submit a tax return for the trust.   Refer to U.K. gov website for registering a trust that gives good and free guidance.

Keep_pedalling

HobgoblinBT said:

Have you carried out a Google search for “winding up a trust deed”. Sometimes you can obtain a suitable wording without paying a solicitor £400 per hour to get the appropriate specimen wording.  

You will also need to confirm the winding up of the trust with the U.K. gov website and may need to submit a tax return for the trust.   Refer to U.K. gov website for registering a trust that gives good and free guidance.

This is a tiny estate which will not have gone through probate and the trust will not have been registered with HMRC so there is no need to formally wind it up and certainly no need to spend nearly a third of it on a solicitor. 

fdb66

Thanks for the replies. Yes it's all been quite simple with no probate and the trust hasn't been registered with HMRC so I was hoping the money could just be distributed. Would there be any implications in having an empty trust persisting for 125 years?

Keep_pedalling

fdb66 said:

Thanks for the replies. Yes it's all been quite simple with no probate and the trust hasn't been registered with HMRC so I was hoping the money could just be distributed. Would there be any implications in having an empty trust persisting for 125 years?

There would be no trust, you just distribute the cash and forget it. 

Was this a very old wills written when your siblings were minors? DTs are not normally associated with small estates.

fdb66

Thanks, we'll just distribute it and forget about it.

Yes it's quite old and the trust bit seemed a bit unncecessary.