Closing a discretionary trust and distributing contents to beneficiaries

[Starlightone]

My brother and I are trustees of my mothers discretionary will trust set up when our mother died in 1996.

The only thing in the discretionary trust is her 50% share of the family home.

We have instructed our solicitor to write the Deed of Appointment to distribute the contents of the trust to the named beneficiaries of the will. The purpose being that the 1/2 share of the house is owned in equal shares by each of the beneficiaries and the Discretionary Will is closed completely.

I am not sure that what we have asked for is what is described in the deed of appointment.

The wording says "The Appointers, in exercise of the power of appointment conferred by clause 5(e) of the Will and of all other relevant powers, hereby irrevocably appoint and declare that the Appointed Fund shall, from the date of this Deed, be held upon trust for the said CCH, CCW, BMW and CGW in equal shares absolutely"

In their explantory letter the solicitor says that this appoints the trust funds out equally between myself my brother and my other brother and sister. Until the property is sold I and my brother will remain on the title deeds to the property. We will hold our siblings shares in the net proceeds of the sale as "bare trustees" rather than trustees of our mothers will. This means that rather than having discretion over the trust fund from the date we sign the deed, we and our siblings will each have absolute interests in a half share of the property in equal shares.

I do not think that this is what we wanted.

What my brother and I wanted (as trustees) was to distribute the trust funds in equal shares and for the title deeds to the property to be changed to show each beneficiary's name as tenants in common. We did NOT want to hold our siblings share in trust - each sibling was to hold their OWN share absolutely and our mother's discretionary trust to be closed down completely.

Has the solicitor misunderstood what we wanted and I should I get them to re-write the deed?

[Lee Young]

Youve got what you asked for, the solicitor is just saving the Land Registry fee by not changing the names on the title to the property at the same time.