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Protector (trust)
In trust law, a protector is a person appointed under the trust instrument to direct or restrain the trustees in relation to their administration of the trust. Historically, the concept of a protector developed in offshore jurisdictions where settlors were (perhaps understandably) concerned about appointing a trust company in a small, distant country as sole trustee of an offshore trust which is to hold a great deal of the settlor's wealth. However, protectors now form a part of mainstream tax planning in most jurisdictions which recognise trusts. There are a number of reasons that a settlor may wish to appoint a protector in relation to a trust: * protectors allow a great degree of flexibility when dealing with changes in circumstances, including both factual circumstances (death, premature divorce, previously unknown children) and legal changes (any legal changes, but most frequently changes to applicable revenue laws); * the settlor may be concerned that the trustee may n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trust Law
A trust is a legal relationship in which the owner of property, or any transferable right, gives it to another to manage and use solely for the benefit of a designated person. In the English common law, the party who entrusts the property is known as the "settlor", the party to whom it is entrusted is known as the "trustee", the party for whose benefit the property is entrusted is known as the "beneficiary", and the entrusted property is known as the "corpus" or "trust property". A ''testamentary trust'' is an irrevocable trust established and funded pursuant to the terms of a deceased person's will. An inter vivos trust is a trust created during the settlor's life. The trustee is the legal owner of the assets held in trust on behalf of the trust and its beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are equitable owners of the trust property. Trustees have a fiduciary duty to manage the trust for the benefit of the equitable owners. Trustees must provide regular accountings of trust income ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trust Instrument
In trust law, a trust instrument (also sometimes called a deed of trust, where executed by way of deed) is an instrument in writing executed by a settlor used to constitute a trust. Trust instruments are generally only used in relation to an ''inter vivos'' trust; testamentary trusts are usually created under a will. Formalities Although in most legal systems there are certain formalities associated with settling a trust, most legal systems impose few, if any, structures on the trust instrument itself. Historically, the concept of a trust is the intervention of the courts of equity to prevent a legal owner treating the property as beneficially his own; provided that state of affairs exists, a trust arises notwithstanding any lack of formality in relation to the form of the trust instrument. However, notwithstanding the flexible approach taken by the law, characteristically the legal profession has taken an extremely formalised approach to trust instruments. Not only are the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trustee
Trustee (or the holding of a trusteeship) is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, refers to anyone in a position of trust and so can refer to any individual who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another. A trustee can also be a person who is allowed to do certain tasks but not able to gain income.''Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition'' (1979), p. 1357, . Although in the strictest sense of the term a trustee is the holder of property on behalf of a beneficiary, the more expansive sense encompasses persons who serve, for example, on the board of trustees of an institution that operates for a charity, for the benefit of the general public, or a person in the local government. A trust can be set up either to benefit particular persons or for any charitable purposes (but not generally for non-charitable purposes): typical examples are a will trust for the testator's children and family, a pension trust (to confer bene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Settlor
In trust law, a settlor is a person who settles (i.e. gives into trust) their property for the benefit of the beneficiary. In some legal systems, a settlor is also referred to as a trustor, or occasionally, a grantor or donor. Where the trust is a testamentary trust, the settlor is usually referred to as the ''testator''. The settlor may also be the trustee of the trust (where he declares that he holds his own property on trusts) or a third party may be the trustee (where he transfers the property to the trustee on trusts). In the common law of England and Wales, it has been held, controversially, that where a trustee declares an intention to transfer trust property to a trust of which he is one of several trustees, that is a valid settlement notwithstanding the property is not vested in the other trustees. Capacity to be a trustee is generally co-extensive with the ability to hold and dispose of a legal or beneficial interest in property. In practice, special considerations aris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trust Company
A trust company is a corporation that acts as a fiduciary, trustee or agent of trusts and agencies. A professional trust company may be independently owned or owned by, for example, a bank or a law firm, and which specializes in being a trustee of various kinds of trusts. The "trust" name refers to the ability to act as a trustee – someone who administers financial assets on behalf of another. The assets are typically held in the form of a trust (property), trust, a legal instrument that spells out who the beneficiaries are and what the money can be spent for. A trustee will manage investments, keep records, manage assets, prepare court accounting, pay bills (depending on the nature of the trust), medical expenses, charitable gifts, inheritances or other distributions of income and principal. Estate administration A trust company can be named as an executor or personal representative in a will (law), last will and testament. The responsibilities of an executor in settling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Offshore Trust
An offshore trust is a conventional trust that is formed under the laws of an offshore jurisdiction. Generally offshore trusts are similar in nature and effect to their onshore counterparts; they involve a settlor transferring (or 'settling') assets (the 'trust property') on the trustees to manage for the benefit of a person, class or persons (the ' beneficiaries') or, occasionally, an abstract purpose. However, a number of offshore jurisdictions have modified their laws to make their jurisdictions more attractive to settlors forming offshore structures as trusts. Liechtenstein, a civil jurisdiction which is sometimes considered to be offshore, has artificially imported the trust concept from common law jurisdictions by statute. Uses of offshore trusts Official statistics on trusts are difficult to come by as in most offshore jurisdictions (and in most onshore jurisdictions), trusts are not required to be registered, however, it is thought that the most common use of offshore t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tax Planning
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes. Tax avoidance should not be confused with tax evasion, which is illegal. Forms of tax avoidance that use legal tax laws in ways not necessarily intended by the government are often criticized in the court of public opinion and by journalists. Many businesses pay little or no tax, and some experience a backlash when their tax avoidance becomes known to the public. Conversely, benefiting from tax laws in ways that were intended by governments is sometimes referred to as tax planning. The World Bank's World Development Report 2019 on the future of work supports increased government efforts to curb tax avoidance as part of a new social contract focused on human capital investments and expanded social protection. "Tax mitigation", "tax ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beneficiaries
A beneficiary in the broadest sense is a natural person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor. For example, the beneficiary of a life insurance policy is the person who receives the payment of the amount of insurance after the death of the insured. In trust law, beneficiaries are also known as '' cestui que use''. Most beneficiaries may be designed to designate where the assets will go when the owner(s) dies. However, if the primary beneficiary or beneficiaries are not alive or do not qualify under the restrictions, the assets will probably pass to the ''contingent beneficiaries''. Other restrictions such as being married or more creative ones can be used by a benefactor to attempt to control the behavior of the beneficiaries. Some situations such as retirement accounts do not allow any restrictions beyond the death of the primary beneficiaries, but trusts allow any restrictions that are not illegal or for an illegal purpose. The concept of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trusts (conflict)
The Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to Trusts and on their Recognition, or Hague Trust Convention is a multilateral treaty developed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law on the Law Applicable to Trusts. It concluded on 1 July 1985, entered into force 1 January 1992, and is as of September 2017 ratified by 14 countries. The Convention uses a harmonised definition of a trust, which is the subject of the convention, and sets conflict rules for resolving problems in the choice of the applicable law. The key provisions of the Convention are: * each party recognises the existence and validity of trusts. However, the Convention only relates to trusts with a written trust instrument. It would not apply trusts which arise (usually in common law jurisdictions) without a written trust instrument. * the Convention sets out the characteristics of trusts under the convention. * the Convention sets out clear rules for determining the governing law of trusts with a cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proper Law
The doctrine of the proper law is applied in the choice of law stage of a lawsuit involving the conflict of laws. When the jurisdiction is in dispute, one or more state laws will be relevant to the decision-making process. If the laws are the same, this will cause no problems, but if there are substantive differences, the choice of which law to apply will produce a different judgment. Each state, therefore, produces a set of rules to guide the choice of law, and one of the most significant rules is that the law to be applied in any given situation will be the ''proper law''. This is the law that seems to have the closest and most real connection to the facts of the case, and so has the best claim to be applied. The term "proper" refers back to the older English sense as being "proper to". In other words, the law proper to the contract or the contractual term or issue involved. All laws, to a greater or lesser extent, are reflections of the public policies of the state that ena ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Case Law
Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a legal case that have been resolved by courts or similar tribunals. These past decisions are called "case law", or precedent. ''Stare decisis''—a Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand"—is the principle by which judges are bound to such past decisions, drawing on established judicial authority to formulate their positions. These judicial interpretations are distinguished from statutory law, which are codes enacted by legislative bodies, and regulatory law, which are established by executive agencies based on statutes. In some jurisdictions, case law can be applied to ongoing adjudication; for example, criminal proceedings or family law. In common law countries (including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Austral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
