Futura Planning — Your Legacy. Our Expertise

Protect your home, keep control

Lifetime Trusts protect and preserve your home and assets for future generations, while you keep access and control during your lifetime.

  • Active during your lifetime
  • You keep control
  • Qualified, insured SWW members
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The basics

What are Lifetime Trusts?

A Discretionary Lifetime Trust is set up and put in place now, during your lifetime. That is the key difference from a Trust within a Will, which only becomes active after your passing.

This kind of Trust is not new. It has been used in the UK for hundreds of years, and remains one of the most powerful and flexible estate planning tools available. Many people come to us considering a simple Will, having heard about trusts along the way, and we help them weigh it up honestly.

If you're weighing this up against a trust written into your Will instead, our overview of trusts explains how the different types compare.

  • Active now, not laterProtection begins during your lifetime.
  • You stay in controlAccess and control of your home and assets remain with you.
  • Smoother for your familyAssets in the Trust can spare loved ones the delays of probate.
  • Centuries of pedigreeA long-established structure, refined over hundreds of years.

How a Lifetime Trust works

Set up now, yours for life

1

Set up today

We create the trust now, during your lifetime, shaped around your wishes.

2

You keep control

You retain access to and control of your home and assets throughout your life.

3

Passes to your family

When the time comes it passes on smoothly, sheltered from the delays of probate.

A simple Will might not always be the best option

Extra control and protection matter because life has unexpected events. Without a trust:

A surviving partner remarries and the children are disinherited
Care costs could leave nothing for loved ones to inherit
Unmarried couples can pay more inheritance tax
Gifts are at risk if a beneficiary divorces or becomes bankrupt
A beneficiary has a disability or receives means-tested benefits
Children end up disinherited
Explore your options

An honest word

Do I need a Lifetime Trust?

Not necessarily. It really depends on your circumstances and what you are looking to achieve. We always begin with a general chat about you and your aims, and there may be more than one suitable option to explore together.

If a Lifetime Trust is not for you, you can always still create a simple Will or a Will Trust as desired.

Questions, answered

Lifetime Trust FAQs

It is set up now and active during your lifetime, rather than taking effect after you pass away. You keep access and control.
No. You retain control during your lifetime; the trust simply governs what happens to the assets held within it.
Assets held in the trust can pass without the delays of probate, which can make things simpler for your family.
No. It suits particular circumstances. We always start with a chat and will tell you honestly if a simpler option is better.

Keep exploring

Our other services

Friendly, professional guidance across everything estate planning, always personal and always in plain English.

Online Wills

Personalised one-to-one advice over a video call. A cost-effective way to create a professionally drafted Will.

Learn more

Home Visit Wills

A trained professional meets you in the comfort of your own home to create your Will together.

Learn more

Lasting Power of Attorney

Give those you trust the legal power to act for you. We save you the paperwork and explain every term.

Learn more

Your home, protected for generations.

Book an appointmentCall 01934 442030

Home visits across Somerset, or online anywhere in England and Wales.

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