Trusts in plain English: what a trust does that a will can't (UK)
18 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
A will hands your money over and that's the end of your involvement. Whoever receives it can spend it, lose it in a divorce, or leave it to someone you've never met. A trust is the tool for the situations where handing it over outright is the wrong answer.
What a trust actually is
Two sets of people. Trustees hold the legal title and make the decisions. Beneficiaries get the benefit. Splitting those two things is the entire trick, and everything else is detail about who decides what and when.
The three you'll actually come across
A life interest trust lets someone, usually a surviving spouse, live in the house and take the income for life. The capital passes to your children when they die. It's the standard fix for second marriages. A discretionary trust gives the trustees a pot and a list of possible beneficiaries, and lets them choose. That suits a vulnerable beneficiary, someone on means-tested benefits, or a young adult you'd rather not hand a lump sum to at 18. A bare trust just holds money until a child turns 18, at which point it's theirs outright whether you'd have chosen that or not.
The costs nobody mentions in the sales pitch
Trusts have their own tax regime and it isn't gentle. Most family trusts face a charge every ten years of up to 6% of the value above the nil rate band, plus exit charges when money comes out. Income kept in a discretionary trust is taxed at the top rates. There's admin, too. Most express trusts have to be registered with HMRC's Trust Registration Service, generally within 90 days, with penalties for ignoring it. Trustees also carry real legal duties they can be sued over. Set one up because it solves a problem, not because it sounds sophisticated.
The one to be suspicious of
If someone at a free seminar offers you a trust that protects your house from care fees, be careful. Councils assess whether assets were given away deliberately to avoid paying, and there's no time limit on how far back they can look. If deliberate deprivation is found, they can charge you as though you still owned the house, and you've paid several thousand pounds for the privilege.
Used properly, a trust does something a will genuinely can't: it keeps control after you're gone. Used as a default, it adds cost and paperwork to an estate that would have been simpler without it. The honest test is whether you can say in one sentence what problem it solves, and whether whoever ends up as trustee knows the trust exists at all.
Leave your family a map, not a mystery.
Inherit Vault is a digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.
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