Lifeline Family Property Trust

A Family Property Trust (Property Protection Trust) is a way to ring fence your assets as a way to protect them. This can be useful to ensure that when you die, your children will inherit without dilution, even if your partner re-marries.  

You can only create a Protective Property Trust whilst both you and your partner are alive. With couples, the property is usually divided 50/50, though this can vary according to circumstances.

After the death of the first partner, their share of the property is placed into the Trust through the Will and after probate it is then administered by the trustees.

The Will also specifies who the ultimate beneficiaries of this share in the property are to be (usually the surviving children). Under the terms of the Trust, the surviving partner/spouse has the right to live in the property for the rest of their life.

On the death of the second partner the Trust comes to an end and the property passes absolutely to the surviving beneficiaries. 

It protects the deceased person’s share of the property for the people they want to benefit from it (usually their children) even if the surviving partner or spouse remarries. This protects the children’s share of the property from “sideways disinheritance”.