name on title deeds stopping pension?

Postman Pat posted

No, I agree - I wasn't thinking of family trusts that have been around for years and have several (and variable) beneficiaries. They do tend to have some protection from gold-digging wives.

I was thinking of the kind of trust that I understood you were proposing

- where the parent places assets in trust for the son in order to keep them away from the wife. The courts have generally ordered that these assets count as part of the husband's property and should therefore be handed to the wife.

Big Les Wade wrote

I think the key words in the above are "for the son".

What exactly does this mean?

I am totally nonexpert on this but AIUI a bare trust transfers the asset to the beneficiary at 18.

An accumulation & maintenance trust can delay till 25 - my Will actually sets up an A&M trust for my children, with a specified delay till 25. Actually I heard recently that all this has recently changed (the law) so maybe I need to have it looked at...

So if you create a lifetime A&M trust for your son, and at 23 he divorces, the Court could well say that at 25 it is all his anyway so into the matrimonial melting pot it goes.... that's if they know about the trust!!

But if the trust is one under which the asset never passes to the son, what can the court do?

IMHO, nothing.

In fact the old man could just hang onto the house and rent it to his son, and use the Will (below).

In the meantime, the son can live in the house as a tenant, paying some rent...

And the old man could always put a provision in his Will to pass the house to his son, so this way if the son divorces during the father's lifetime, all is OK. And such a provision can be secret - this is desirable in case the old man got ill, in which case you have a potential inheritance situation. Anyway, AIUI, the divorce court has no right to examine the Will of the old man - unless like I say he is ill and might die soon. Anyway, one can make secret provisions in Wills: you leave an asset to a trusted friend, with a letter (or a nod) to pass the asset to a specified person after X years. It is quite safe because all the time you are alive, you can tear it up and nobody knows. That deals with the potential inheritance scenario too.

Perjury is not a problem because the instruction to the trusted friend can be in a sealed envelope, and by the time this is opened, the old man is dead.

If I can think of this kind of stuff, I am sure any half competent solicitor can do far better.

But, as stated, the best advice to his son is to be damn careful who he marries :)

Postman Pat posted

There are other types of trusts besides bare and A&M. In discretionary trusts, the trustees are free to distribute (or not distribute) assets or income among multiple potential beneficiaries at their discretion, within very broad guidelines. It *is* hard for an outsider to get her hands on this type of trust.

However where the son is the sole beneficiary an English court might take the view that the trust is just a sham. I don't really understand how the divorce courts do their "reasoning" in these cases, but it's a fact that many rich men who used a trust to protect their assets from a new wife have later found the courts didn't allow it. There may be hope, though: see for example

Big Les Wade wrote

What happens quite a lot is that the divorce court cannot get its hands on a load of assets, so they move assets which they *can* get its hands on to the ex wife, to compensate for the stuff they cannot get their hands on.

For example the court cannot force the sale of the man's business. But they can get it valued, and move equivalent realisable assets (savings, pensions, house, etc) to her.

Historically they could not get their hands on pensions too. I believe this has changed, but they used to just get them valued and move other stuff to the ex wife.

There is no escape, and methods which might work involve subterfuge which I cannot see an honest man running for years, with a wife.

Why on earth marry if one is going to do that? NOT marrying is so easy

- one can buy perfectly edible microwave meals nowadays, and there is no shortage of women, especially 40+, who are happy with casual relationships :)

Far better to be really fussy about who to marry. Avoiding bunny boilers is not that hard, even for a bloke ;)

Postman Pat posted

Of course in my day we used telegraph poles. But tell that to the youth of today they won't believe you.

I agree. But mothers teach their daughters all sorts of tricks to apply the pressure to marry, and men do fall for it. As my wife says, "I don't understand why you men are such suckers for it, but I'm glad you are." I hasten to add that I was flat broke when I married her, so I didn't have anything to lose :)

Big Les Wade wrote

What would that do? Sorry but I don't get it :)

Old primary school smutty poem:

In days of old When men were bold And women weren't invented, They'd drill a hole In a telegraph pole And stand there quite contented.