I have a client who has instructed me to prepare a Will for her with her whole estate passing into a discretionary trust. Her letter of wishes directs that her partner (unmarried), if he survives her, is to have a right to occupy their jointly owned property for the remainder of his life. The capital is to then be distributed between her daughter and grandchildren (pending the grandchildren being over 25 and ‘responsible’).
She would like our firm to be professional executors and trustees. Her daughter is not currently aware of her partner, although she does intend to introduce them soon now that her divorce is final, but she does not expect her daughter to be ‘warm’ to him. Her grandchildren are early 20’s and not yet (in her opinion) responsible enough to be trustees. She therefore doesn’t think it suitable to have family members as trustees at the moment.
Her interest in the property is worth around £200k and there is around £50k cash.
I have explained our costs as professional trustees in detail to her and discussed the fact that we may need to charge her partner some rent to cover these costs if there is insufficient cash at the time which she is happy with. We are not currently instructed by her partner but I have encouraged her to involve him in the instructions so he is aware of the terms and costs etc.
When my colleague looked over the Will for me she is concerned about the firm being professional trustees. She is worried that there will not be enough cash to cover our fees if there are any disputes or the partner refuses to pay rent etc. I do appreciate where she is coming from although the capital of the property will be there to cover any fees eventually.
I was just curious about the options for professional trustees to ‘retire’ on these grounds if there was no person willing to take on the role i.e. the family members were not willing to replace the retiring trustees (although I’m sure they would be)?
Similarly are there any repercussions against professional trustees from a beneficiary if they felt that they had retired and replaced themselves with unsuitable trustees. e.g. if the trustees replaced themselves with the grandchildren who then excluded the daughter from the distribution
Any thoughts much appreciated