Expertise - Trusts

Ozannes' Trusts comprises some of the firm's leading practitioners who practise in trust matters. They offer the skill and expertise required to assist individuals and corporate bodies who wish to establish and maintain trusts. Our expertise ensures that transactions are put together efficiently and expeditiously.

A Matter of Trust

Ozannes’ Trusts offers expertise in all areas of trust business including the establishment of private client and special purpose trusts; contentious/non-contentious trust applications to the court; pensions, both international and local; employee benefit schemes; the creation of Private Trust Companies; commercial and securitisation vehicles, and charitable trusts.

Pan-Island Advice

With the opening of Ozannes’ Jersey office in 2006, the services on offer from Ozannes’ Trusts have now expanded to cover two of the world’s leading offshore jurisdictions – Guernsey and Jersey.

Increasingly, trust and taxation matters may require the involvement of advisers from other jurisdictions. Ozannes works and liaises with lawyers on a worldwide basis and maintains excellent working relationships with many leading firms.

Trust Vehicles

Ozannes’ Trusts offers private clients and professional trustees specialist advice on the establishment and running of their trusts, whilst they offer corporate clients expertise in the establishment of pension trusts and employee benefit schemes. Trusts used in connection with commercial and securitisation vehicles are provided as part of overall planning centred in Ozannes’ Corporate. Our expertise in trusts and corporate work ensures that transactions are put together efficiently and expeditiously.

Tax Planning

Ozannes has considerable expertise in local tax matters. It also regularly works and liaises with tax professionals across the globe. Ozannes is also involved in the majority of the tax cases that come before the local Guernsey courts and also has experience of the Guernsey Tax Tribunal. Advice is frequently given on the Guernsey tax consequences of establishing structures.

Ground-Breaking Trust Advice

Ozannes has taken a leading role in developing Guernsey trust law through its involvement with both contentious and non contentious cases, whether acting for trustees or beneficiaries. Since the establishment of the Guernsey trust legislation in 1989, the firm has represented parties in nearly every contentious trust appeal going to the Guernsey Court of Appeal. These include such important cases as Stuart-Hutcheson v Spread Trustee Co Limited (2002) which revolutionised beneficiaries’ ‘rights’ to trust information and the application of trust principles generally in Guernsey, as well as A Limited and B Limited v H M Procureur (2004), which involved the position of beneficiaries of trusts when the trustees were subject to disclosure orders.

In 2004, St John Robilliard was elected to the International Academy of Trust and Estate Law, and in 2005 Rupert Evans, a consultant and former partner of Ozannes, was appointed Chairman of the Trust Law working party to review Guernsey trust legislation, as a consequence of which new trust legislation was enacted in March 2008. The Channel Islands have clear and effective trust principles, which will be familiar to trust lawyers generally, making it well suited to contemporary needs. Ozannes has been at the forefront of developing these principles.