help please with Universal Wealth preservation Trust

I'm only joining this thread as my family are having major issues with this company also. We were in the final stages of them gathering the remainder of the funds from my late father-in-law estate to distribute to us at the end of 2017. Since then we've not been able to get in contact with them at all, either by phone or by email.

We've had the auto-reply email, and we did have one email from a Christina Sinclair "PA to Steven Long", apparently, which was basically a holding email. But nothing since then.

We've now engaged solicitors, who have sent out a warning letter. If we don't get the funds by next Tuesday, we start exploring court options.

From the moment I realised my father-in-law had put his property in one of their trusts and had had his will re-written to nominate Steven Long as an executor, I had a bad feeling about this company. Now my fears are coming true. We've had the grant of probate since November 2016, and it took them over a year to get on with requesting the funds from the various companies who needed probate. And now they disappear on us!

I don't know what else we can do, to be honest.

Based on my 80 year old father's experience, this recommends other potential customers not trust Universal Trustees. They also trade as Universal Asset Protection, Universal Group and, according to other consumer reviews, potentially up to 14 other companies. All trade from Dencora House, 34 White House Rd, Ipswich IP1 5LT. They have initial hefty fees with an annual service charge promising ongoing support. They appear to be very professional and operate via recruitment presentations with follow-up home sales visits.

They hide behind anonymity, never answer the phone - indeed have a permanent answerphone message requesting customers email them for help, are slow to email back other than via automated response, and fail to call back despite multiple emails and answerphone messages. They finally admitted via anonymous email to operating without the appropriate legal, tax and financial staff in place to support customers. They also operate without a regulator's oversight which should make future customers very wary.

They promise expert advice on legal matters and a letter from their in house solicitor if/when necessary to the local authority should any challenge be made against a Trust's validity. In my father's case he set up a Trust for inheritance planning purposes. Much later he fell ill requiring expert nursing care. To date he has paid over £80K in care home fees. Now, when he needs support, the Local Authority is wrongly claiming a deliberate deprivation of assets and are refusing to contribute to care costs.

Universal are refusing the advice and help promised in their leaflets and my father's contract, in part quote "This means at this time, Universal are unable to assist you further in relation to your local authority enquiries as we do not have the required team members with the necessary skills to provide you with the appropriate advice."
They formerly employed an in-house solicitor but do so no longer, yet continue to provide Trust advice to new customers. Meanwhile my father is fearful of losing the house he hopes to return to as he has a positive prognosis and is thankfully making great progress in beating his illness.

Should you be looking for inheritance advice and be considering establishing a Trust to ensure your wishes are fulfilled, I recommend you consult with a reputable solicitor or accountant as a first step and use professionals who operate within a regulator's framework, eg the FSA, and are based locally.

Should you unfortunately feel you are in a position of having been mis-sold, or exploited, or indeed are now worried about your Trust's management and assets, I agree with the advice in other consumer reviews to report Universal to both Suffolk Trading Standards via your local Citizens Advice and Universal's industry association STEP on 020 3752 3700, although they do not have the teeth of a regulator. Importantly, you should contact your solicitor and ensure your assets are protected and placed under the control of regulated Trustees, either them or those they recommend locally. Good luck.

Additionally, if you write one "review" like this, you can then quickly post it to the many consumer review sites that you will find when you ask Google in order to hopefully protect other vulnerable, elderly consumers.

Has anyone had any kind of response out of any of the companies beyond the auto-response email? The last contact I had was from Christina Sinclair, which was basically a holding email, but that was 16th January.

Has anyone had more recent contact?

I've been trying to track down contact details for Steven Long, but to no avail. Despite being director for 15 companies, he's hidden his tracks well! Although I note that he is the director of a seemingly completely unrelated company: "Tim Long Cleaning Limited", which sounds like it's a family member's business.

I can't tell if that is also related to a company called TLCwindowCleaning, which, on its website, has their cars/vans lined up outside a building that also has one the "Universal" logos in the window. Curiouser and curiouser.