A Trust fund can be created at any time and be used for a variety of purposes. Trusts enable you to pass on money or property while you are still alive, can protect the family’s assets after your death, fund a charity, or protect the assets of someone who is too young or incapacitated to deal with financial matters themselves. Trusts are not a new invention. One of the oldest trusts in existence is the City of London Trust, which has been in operation for the last 800 years and is used to finance a range of activities including the maintenance of Tower Bridge.

Although trusts can be set up at anytime, the best option for most people is to create a trust as part of the will. After all, unless you have a lot of property and assets, while you are still living you can probably administer your financial affairs yourself. Although there can be tax advantages to setting up a trust to work while you are still alive, most people do not have enough assets to make this option viable and it is simply not worth the expense.

A trust as part of a Will can help protect your family if anything happens to you. If you have children, you can stipulate that your estate can be held in trust for them until they are old enough to be able to be trusted with financial decisions. That way you will know that they will not blow the lot on a round the world trip or a ritzy pad in London once they hit 18! You can instruct the trust to make regular payments to them but they will not have access to the fund. You can set an age when the fund can be released, based on when you judge that they will be mature enough to look after a lump sum of money.

You can also stipulate where the trust money is to be spent. For example, you can specify that it be used only for educational purposes such as school or university fees, and earmark that the release of further funds will be dependent on gradation or passing exams. A trust fund ensures that the inheritance you leave your children and dependents will remain intact and not at risk from third parties, bad advice and youthful exuberance.

Trusts can enable you to continue to help your descendents after you have gone. By adding a trust to your Will it will help you benefit the next generation. If you do not have children yourself, you can set up a trust fund for someone else, the children of close friends, a charity, a cause you believe in, or anything else that you chose.

However you feel about money, one thing is certain you cannot take it with you! Making a trust will allow you to carry on doing your best for your family or your favourite charity long after your death. If you wish to find out more about Trusts and get some professional advice you can contact the Probate Bureau. If you live in London or the South East, you can meet with an adviser in your own home.

Whilst most people write their Will simply to ensure their family are provided for and to stipulate their funeral wishes, others use it as a way of settling old scores or expressing their beliefs.

Below, we have picked some of the more colourful Last Wills and Testaments to have emerged to highlight just how powerful a Will can be:

1. Famous British singer Dusty Springfield made sure that her cat was extremely well provided for in her Will. Strict instructions stated that he was only to be fed imported baby food and was to be serenaded with her records. It was even arranged that he would ‘marry’ his new guardian’s pet cat.
2. 1960s rock icon Janis Joplin made changes to her Will just 2 days before her death from an overdose on 4^th October 1970. Although the majority of her estate was left to her parents, she set aside $2,500 for an all-night party for 200 friends at her favourite pub so “my friends can all get blasted after I’m gone”.
3. Arizona hermit and miner, James Kidd, went missing in 1949 and was legally declared dead in 1956. His Will was later discovered in 1963 which stipulated that his entire $275,000 estate was to be used to prove the existence of a human soul which leaves the body at death. More than 100 petitions for the inheritance were dismissed by the courts and it was awarded in 1971 to the American Society for Psychical Research. Disappointingly, they failed to prove the existence of a soul.
4. The next Will is that of wealthy tanner John Bowman who outlived both his wife and two daughters. In the final years of his life, he became convinced that on his death his entire family would be reincarnated together. Due to this belief, he provided in his Will for a $50,000 trust fund to pay for the maintenance of his 21 bedroom mansion and mausoleum. Servants were left with instructions to prepare dinner for the family every night in case the family were hungry when they returned from the dead. After his death in 1891 his Will was honoured and the instructions were carried out until the trust fund ran out of money in 1950.
5. Samuel Bratt is one man who used his Will to get even. In life, his wife never allowed him to smoke his favourite cigars. Embittered by this, in his Will he left his £330,000 estate to her, on the condition that she smokes five cigars a day for the rest of her life.
6. In 1841, German poet Heinrich Heine married Eugenie Mirat, a clerk at a Parisian bootshop. In his Will, he left her everything on the condition that she remarry. His explanation for this was that “then there will be at least one man who will regret my death.”
7. American radio personality Jack Benny had been married to his wife Sayde for 48 years when he died the day after Christmas in 1974. The day after his funeral, Sayde received a single, long-stemmed rose from a florist. She then received another the next day, and the day after that. Some people say she phoned the florist and demanded to know where the roses were coming from. However, it’s more likely that she just read his Will. In it Jack set aside money for a rose to be sent to her every day for the rest of her life, she lived another 9 years.
8. The inventor of the Frisbee and sport ‘Disc Golf’, Ed Headrick, often joked to his son that he wanted to live on as a Frisbee after his death. No one took him seriously but he made it clear that he was not joking when he made his Will. After his death in 2002, his body was cremated and the ashes used to make a limited number of ‘memorial flying discs’ which were to be distributed amongst friends and family. Those left over were sold with the proceeds to go towards the creation of a ‘Frisbee and Disc Golf  history and memorabilia museum’.
9. What would you do if you had few friends and no family? Would you leave your estate to charity? Well, Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara, a wealthy Portuguese bachelor, decided to be a little more creative. Thirteen years before his death he made a Will leaving his entire estate to 70 strangers he randomly selected from the Lisbon phonebook. When contacted, most of them thought they were being scammed but each of them received several thousand pounds from the estate.
10. Last on our list is British explorer Sir Walter Rayleigh, responsible for the introduction of tobacco in Europe. Aside from making bequests to relatives and charities he also included the following paragraph:

“I wish every smoker in the kingdom to be invited to my funeral in every way possible, by letter, circular and advertisement. Every smoker who takes advantage of the invitation shall receive as a present ten pounds of tobacco, and two pipes on which shall be engraved my name, my crest, and the date of my death. The poor of the neighborhood who accompany my bier shall receive every year on the anniversary of my death a large package of tobacco. I make the condition that all those who assist at my funeral, if they wish to partake of the benefits of my will, must smoke without interruption during the entire ceremony.”

In addition he requested that his coffin be lined with wood from his old Havana cigar boxes, and a package of French and Dutch tobacco be placed at the foot of his coffin. He also asked that a box of matches and his favorite pipe be left at his side.

It is often considered that if a parent dies, the survivor will automatically become the sole legal guardian of that child.  This is untrue.  A mother automatically has parental responsibility for her child from birth, however the conditions for fathers gaining parental responsibility vary.  A father only has automatic responsibility if he is married to the mother when the child is born or has acquired parental responsibility for his child through one of these three routes:

From the 1^st Dec 2003, jointly registering the birth with the mother

• Parental Responsibility Agreement with the mother (prepared by a solicitor)
• Parental Responsibility Order made by a Court

Living with the mother even for a long time does not give a father parental responsibility and if the parents are not married, parental responsibility does not always pass to the natural father if the mother dies.

All parents (including adoptive parents) have a legal duty to financially support their child whether they have parental responsibility or not.

For this reason it is imperative for anyone with children to write a suitable Will which provides for both their welfare and financial security.

Patricia Steinfeld
Probate Advisor

If you need further help or advice on dealing with estate administration or require more information on Probate or Wills in general, please call The Probate Bureau‘s free helpline on 0800 028 2837

Inheriting a large amount of money is normally a positive experience and many people plan and look forward to using their new-found wealth. However, for people living on state benefits without any savings of their own it can cause worry and confusion.

Some benefits, such as the State Pension and Child Benefit, are universal. This means they are paid to all qualifying individuals regardless of wealth. These benefits would not be affected should you receive a large inheritance.

However, other benefits including Tax Credits, Income Support and Housing Benefit are means-tested and therefore only paid to people on a low income with savings below a certain amount. If you are in receipt of a means-tested benefit it is possible that it will be affected once you receive your inheritance.

As a benefits recipient, it is your responsibility to declare any change in circumstances to your local Job Centre. A Job Centre advisor would then be able to confirm which benefits would be affected by your inheritance.

The Probate Bureau cannot advise you regarding your benefits, however we are able to offer financial planning advice through TPB Financial Services who can assist you in investing your funds to meet your goals. To discuss this please contact James Hurdman on 0844 257 8290.

Trusts can cause a great deal of confusion. It is therefore vital to have proper legal and financial advice before setting up or exercising one. Trusts can “stand alone” or be included in a Will. Many people fall into the trap of purchasing stand alone trusts costing thousands of pounds when a simple trust in a Will or a pilot trust can do the same job for a fraction of the price. For more information on Trusts click here