RENDINALAW LEGAL SERVICES - Trust as a tool to ensure and manage family wealth and asset protection.

TRUST IS A TOOL THAT IS STILL LITTLE USED, IT ALLOWS PARENTS TO CREATE A SPECIES OF PATRIMONY SAFE, WHICH CAN BE GRADUALLY FILLED. ADVANTAGES COMPARED TO SINGLE DONATIONS ARE SEVERAL ... ''

A solution that lends itself well to planning a succession but which in Italy has not yet reached the spread it deserves is the "trust". Parents wishing to donate their own house to their daughter without immediately balancing the account of what would be due to the two brothers by way of legitimacy on future inheritances of parents, could confer the house to a "trust", entrusting the "trustee", that is the professional who administers it, the task of transferring its ownership to the daughter at the end of the trust, in the meantime guaranteeing her the exclusive right to inhabit it.

The duration of the trust can be decided as desired, for example 10 years, or until the death of the settlor, that is the one who institutes it (in this case, the parents). Depending on the evolution of the family assets and the needs of the children, the parents can then confer on the trust other assets of their heritage, instructing the trustee to assign the property to the children on expiry, according to a criterion that respects the legitimate quotas.

The trust works in short as a sort of safe deposit of the assets destined to fall into an inheritance, which the parents can gradually fill with greater ductility than individual donations made in life, when it is not possible to predict how much the value of the assets that, upon the death of the parents, will be inherited. It is therefore impossible to calculate the legitimate quotas that only then will be due to the children, except for those who are really very advanced in years but who, at that point, may no longer be able to balance accounts with other donations or with a will. Hence the many quarrels that arise between the heirs after death, especially in cases of very wealthy families.

A trust can be established in Italy from years ago, having been recognized as valid by a 1989 law that ratified an international convention on the subject. Recurring to manage a succession allows, among other things, considerable tax savings.

In fact, currently, in the case of 3 children, they benefit from an exemption of 1 million euros each on inheritance and gift tax. to which the transfer to a suitably structured trust is subject (if the contributions exceed 3 million, the tax is 4% on the excess), while the subsequent transfer to the children is not subject to any tax. For the registration tax levied on a real estate sale there is no provision for any deductible or other relief, even if it intervenes between parents and children.

In addition, anticipating the transfer of ownership of family assets by using a trust protects them from the possible return, which is rumored to occur, to inheritance tax rates similar to those in force before the abolition in 2000 of the first government Berlusconi, equal to those in force in all the other main European countries, where it is around 30% on average.

Then there is another advantage that responds to the parents' rare fear of the fate of their children's marriage: until the end of the trust, the house intended for a child is not part of his personal wealth, which benefits him in the event of a litigious divorce ; furthermore, in the unfortunate hypothesis that a married child dies prematurely before the trust expires, the house can be destined to the grandsons of the settlor, that is, the children born from the marriage, but not to the spouse, who, otherwise, in the absence of divorce he/she would inherit a share with his children.