The guiding hand

Trusts can be a useful technique to move assets out of an estate - perhaps to reduce investors' potential liability to certain taxes. They can also help avoid the often lengthy delays associated with administering estates so that, in the event of the death of the investor, the people named to benefit from the estate are able to do so as quickly as possible. A trust is a legal agreement, which in its basic form has three parties: a settlor who generally provides the asset to put into the trust, the trustees who are the legal owners of the trust, and the beneficiaries who are the people who...