This is the question most often asked.
You must not have personal access the trust fund. Do not worry, I will explain.
The means-tested benefit rules ignore compensation for injury if it is held in a trust. Your benefits are worked out on your personal funds, not on the compensation held in the trust. If you put trust money in your own hands or personal bank account, that money will be treated as yours and could reduce or stop your benefits. Do not access the trust fund by paying money to yourself or withdrawing cash. Your trustees should buy what you need direct from the trust bank account.
Trust bank accouonts should operate on at least two trustee signatures. Using trust accounts has recently become much easier, as trustees are no longer limited to using cheques. The banks which can help you are Barclays, Cater Allen, and Metro. The first two now provide dual authorised online banking. Metro has a telephone banking system for joint bank accounts. Even with an account that requires two signatures or approvals, you can now easily make a bank transfer. This is a great advance on two signature cheques.
You do not need to access the trust fund. You have a modern method of payment available to you in the form of a bank transfer. Most businesses will provide bank account details and accept a bank transfer.
I find people do get used to working with a cheque book. If you have a cheque book only account with the banks listed above, you should bring it up to date and asked for dual authorised online banking.
Keep personal funds separate from the trust fund. How you then spend the trust fund is your business, not the business of a benefits agency.
You do not have to hold all trust money in a single current bank account. We write trusts which allow the money to be held or invested in almost any way you can do personally. The important point is to be sure the trust holds the funds, not you personally.
Operating a personal injury trust may feel odd at the outset. You will quickly get used to it and see a trust to protect your personal injury compensation as a positive thing.
How to set up and operate a trust bank account
Hello, I was enquiring about a Bare Trust for Personal Injury, with hardly any Interest,and Inflation, to protect the Trust for our future, would could we do to prevent this? (we have our home) could the Trust buy an Apartment to rent, with it going back to trust without affecting our Benefits? or if not able to rent it, would it be possible to buy one for an Holiday home for ourselves, unsure what is allowed, and would you need a personal adviser for this, or someone who deals with Trusts? Any advice would be appreciated, Thankyou. Jayne.
The answer will lie in the trust document.
I write trusts which allow the trust to do almost anything you could do yourself. The trust can hold a wide range of assets and investments, the important point being the trust must hold the asset or investment. So using your examples, the trust would hold the rental and holiday properties and the trust would receive any income from them. On that basis, the investments and their income would be ignored for benefit purposes.
If the amount of money is substantial, I think an independent financial adviser makes sense.