Complete Family Wealth, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 9Trustees and Beneficiaries

Human Consequences

Around the world, in any community shaped by English common law, trusts play a central role in many families' wealth. The reasons that family members establish trusts usually include:

• Tax minimization: putting family assets outside the reach of taxing authorities, with a view to both income taxes and to transfer taxes (i.e., estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes).
• Asset protection: increasing the likelihood that beneficiaries' creditors or disgruntled former spouses will not be able to lay hands on family assets.
• Control: putting a representative of the founder in control of a founder-led enterprise and/or making sure that beneficiaries access family funds for the reasons, at ...