I understand any investment must be in the childs name - Interactive Brokers do family accounts where a childs money can be siloed into a seperate account.
No, no, no. The whole point of a trust is that the assets are
not in the name of the beneficiary — they're in the name of the trustee. The trustee is the legal owner of the trust property. But the beneficiary is the "beneficial owner", which is to say, the trustee must use the trust property for the exclusive benefit of the beneficiary; must account to the beneficiary for his handling of the trust property; and must derive no personal benefit from his ownership of the trust property. So far as tax is concerned, income and gains arising from the trust property are income and gains of the beneficiary, not of the trustee. If the trustee dies, his executor/administrator gains control of the trust property, but subject to the same obligation to use it for the exclusive benefit of the beneficiary.
The purpose of the trust documentation is to establish that this relationship exists, so that the trustee is subject to these obligations.
My intention is a detailed email to myself and wife for a paper trail.
I wouldn't use an email, however detailed. Emails get deleted, or lost when an email account is changed, or when a server is damaged, or just lost because they get buried in digital dross and people forget they are there or cannot trace them.
You need a physical document that you can put your hands on, if necessary,
decades after the arrangement has been set up. I know you're not currently interested in any CAT advantages, but you never know what the future may hold; when you do die, hopefullly many decades from now, it will be signficant that this property is held on trust. So you want a document that your children and your executor will have access to, decades from now, when you're not around to remind them that the document exists or to tell them where to find it.
So, hard copy document, please. Something that looks like it might be important — minimises the chances of it being overlooked or thrown away. Something that you keep with the same care with which you keep, say, your passport.
Something dated — you need to be able to show that the trust documentation was in place when you set the arrangement up. It mustn't look like something that could have been bodged up when the Revenue first came enquiring.
It will state amounts gifted (under annual thresholds), and intention that funds will accumulate as savings or for use for the childs direct costs e.g., education.
It doesn't have to say what money will be going into the trust — at the point where the arrangement is set up, you probably can't say categorically what money
will go into it, since your contributions may vary from year to year according to your circumstances; grandparents may or may not contribute; etc. I think your better course is to identify a specific investment product, broker account or whatever — I don't mean identify it by product name or description; specify an actual account number or policy number. This is the trust account/trust policy; everything paid into it or credited to it belongs beneficially to little Joe or little Sinead or whoever. Keep the documentation establishing the account/policy/ whatever and the trust documentation together. Keep full accounts showing every amount paid in, who that amount came from, what transactions were effected on the account, what income and gains accrued.
Don';t talk about using the money for education costs (or anything else). It's crucial to the success of this strategy that you are setting up a bare trust, not a discretionary trust. If this is a bare trust, the trust property belongs (beneficially) to the child
absolutely. It's his money, end of. Children don't pay their own schoolfees; at least, not while their parents are alive. Any hint that you see yourself having any role in deciding when and how this money should be spent is dangerous; if you contemplate using the trust property in that way then definitely don't use your own home-made trust declaration; get a professional on the job.
The whole deal with a bare trust is that this is the kid's money. The only reason you are holding and managing it for him is because he's under 18. The day he turns 18 you tell him about it (if he doesn't already know); you tell him how much there is; you tell him you'll hand it over to him on demand; and you
do hand it over to him on demand.
(That's not to say that you can't also offer him the benefit of your wise parental counsel about what do do with his unimaginable wealth. But what you're doing there is suggesting to him what
he might decide to do with
his money. If the ungrateful whelp rejects your advice and demands the money so that he can fund a summer of drunkeness and debauchery, you hand it over; it's his money.)
