As set out
in earlier posts, and with thanks to the Television Education Network, today’s post addresses the
issue of ‘Impact of the Spry decision on trusts’ at the following link
- https://youtu.be/mFkCvyZaqZs
As usual, a
transcript of the presentation for those that cannot (or choose not) to view
the presentation is below –
There is no doubt that immediately following Spry,
basically everyone was assuming that the position moving forward would be that
no matter how you set up a trust, and no matter if it was a family trust or a
testamentary trust, it would never provide any level of asset protection at
all.
However, the reality in relation to Spry
is that a lot of the reasons for it having such a radical impact in that
particular scenario were really driven by the factual circumstances of the
case.
For example, there were allegations, though not
proven, neither were they disproven, regarding mismanagement of trust assets,
deliberate threats to actually destroy trust property, and deliberate attempts
to mislead the judges through the various stages of the court process.
If you look at Spry in the context of
these allegations, in terms of the wider factual scenario, and some of the
subsequent cases, it's probably fair to say that you can distinguish a lot of
the general trust structuring planning is in this area, away from the decision
of Spry itself.
Until next
week.