Topic: Discretionary Trusts

Folds Farm Trustees Ltd & anr v Cutts & ors [2024] WTLR 503

The claimants were the corporate trustees of two family trusts established respectively by a deed of variation relating to the will of Oliver Cutts (the 1997 trust), and by the will of Susan Cutts (the will trust). The beneficiaries of these trusts were Susan’s children, grandchildren and remoter issue who were living on or born before specified dates.

The primary asset of the trusts was Folds Farm, a farm in the New Forest in Hampshire comprising various buildings and farmland totalling almost 340 acres. The majority of the farm was within the will trust, while the 1997 trust com...

Grand View Private Trust Co Ltd & ors v Wong & anr [2023] WTLR 149

The Global Resource Trust No.1 (the GRT) was created by a declaration of trust dated 10 May 2001. It was accepted that the true economic settlors were two brothers, YC Wang and YT Wang (the founders), who had built a group of companies from the 1950s into one of the largest business conglomerates in Taiwan (FPG Group). They had died in 2008 and 2014 respectively.

Shortly after the GRT was established, Grid Investors Corp, an investment holding company ultimately owned by the founders which held shares in FPG companies, was transferred to the GRT trustee. The value of those shares ...

SwissIndependent Trustees SA v Sofer & ors [2023] WTLR 329

The claimant, a Swiss corporation, was the sole trustee of three discretionary trusts named as the Gabri, Puyol & Xavi trusts (the trusts) which had been created via a British Virgin Islands (BVI) company by Hyman Sofer (the settlor) in 2006. The trusts, though expressed to be governed by English law, were set up in Australia and a holding vehicle called the Jordi Unit Trust was used to channel the investments. Neither the settlor nor his children or remoter issue originally figured as settlor and beneficiaries, though they were later added to the classes of ‘Specified Beneficiaries’...

Marlborough DP Ltd v Commissioners for HMRC [2021] WTLR 1329

Marlborough DP Ltd (MDPL) operated a dental practice, through which a Dr Thomas, its director and sole shareholder, provided dental services. It had instituted a ‘remuneration trust’ (RT), which it had stated to be for the benefit of persons who had provided or might in the future provide services, custom or products to MDPL. MDPL made ‘contributions’ to the RT which were said to reflect ‘part of the economic cost to [MDPL] of earning its profits’. MDPL then deducted its contributions to the RT as business expenses in computing its profits for accounting purposes, and claimed deductions ...

SM v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2021] WTLR 1025

On 3 August 2016, the appellant made a claim for income-related Employment and Support Allowance, asking for any award to be backdated to 2 June 2016. The appellant was in receipt of regular monthly payments from discretionary family trusts of £600 per month, rising to £750 per month from July 2016. She also received £750 per month from a lodger from July 2016.

Her application was refused on 10 July 2018 on the basis that her income exceeded the limit under the Employment and Support Allowance Regulations 2008. A mandatory reconsideration confirmed the initial outcome, an...

Smith & anr v Michelmores Trust Corporation Ltd & ors [2021] WTLR 1051

The testatrix (T), whose husband predeceased her, was survived by her four children, B1, B2, B3 and B4. T had appointed B3 and the partners of a solicitor firm as the executors of her will. She left the residue of her estate on trust to be divided into four equal shares: one for the benefit of each of B1, B2 and B3, and the fourth upon discretionary trusts, which included a wide power of appointment, for the benefit of B4 and his children and remoter issue. At the time of the hearing, B4 had three adult children and one minor grandchild. T died in 2010 and probate of her will was granted...

PTNZ v AS & ors [2020] WTLR 1423

In the course of the claimant’s application as trustee of four discretionary trusts in similar terms governed by English law for the blessing of momentous decisions, AS (the settlor and the original protector of the trusts) died.

The trusts had been varied soon after they were declared to expand the powers of the protector to give and withhold consent to the exercise of powers by the trustee. In the absence of a protector the trustee was free to exercise those powers without obtaining a third-party consent. The trusts were administered in Jersey on behalf of the claimant, a profes...

JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank & Anr v Pugachev [2015] EWCA Civ 139

In the early 1990s, Mr Pugachev founded the JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank (the bank) in Russia. It became one of Russia’s largest privately owned commercial banking groups. On 4 October 2010, the Russian Central Bank revoked its banking licence and appointed a ‘temporary administration’ and on 30 November 2010 it was declared insolvent by the Russian court and placed into temporary administration. The state corporation ‘Deposit Insurance Agency’ (the DIA) was appointed as liquidator. Mr Pugachev left Russia for London in 2011. The Russian liquidation of the bank was recognised by...

JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank & anr v Pugachev & ors [2014] EWHC 3547 (Ch)

This concerned an application by the trustees of five discretionary trusts of which the defendant was a discretionary object. The defendant was the founder of the first claimant, a Russian bank (the bank). The bank had subsequently gone into administration and the second claimant, a Russian state organisation (the DIA), had been appointed as its liquidator. The DIA sought to enforce various claims against the defendant in Russian and English proceedings. The sums involved were in the order of $2.2bn.

At a hearing before Henderson J on 11 July 2014 a freezing order was made agains...