Can I set up a trust for my children/grandchildren’s education?

Setting up trusts to cover future educational needs of your family can be a tax – efficient way of removing liability from your estate while ensuring that investments are made to cover the costs of education.

There are of course options and choices to be made. For the purposes of this note we will ignore Junior ISA’s as they are not trusts but can be used to get the same result.

Bare trusts are perhaps more flexible than Junior ISA’s as you can invest much larger sum of money and access the funds at any time so long as it is to benefit the child concerned. Although there are indeed many tax advantages of the Bare trust it has one significant downside in that when the child turns 18, they can access all the funds themselves.

A Discretionary trust however has many of the advantages of the Bare trust without the ability for the child to access the funds when they become an adult.

If you are thinking of setting up a trust for your child or grandchild to cover their educational needs, then get in touch and we can talk you through the options.