Putting life insurance policies into trust

[breathingcalmly]

Wonder if anyone can help! My dad has two over 50s life insurance policies with Sun Life and he wants to put them into Trust so the money can go to his grandkids. Sun Life don't offer a service where you can put them into trust and instead they direct you to talk to a solicitor or financial advisor. A solicitor quoted me £2,600 for the work and considering the policies are worth 10k, it really wasn't worth spending that money.

Does anyone know if there's a cheaper way of doing this? I was speaking to someone online who quoted £300, which was fine but he wanted payment over the phone straight away and when I did some checks on him, he didn't appear to be an actual FA, so I've dropped that idea.

Wondering if there's another way to do it? Thanks!

If the children are under 18 on receiving it you can put into a bank account they can't access until older, a full trust however is for serious money because it costs a silly amount

Why does he want them to go into a trust? He could just write them into his will and specify that the executors transfer the funds into bank accounts. I’m assuming there are at least 2 grandchildren so only 5K each to go to them. Hardly life changing amounts, and the cost of putting them into a trust would eat into that amount significantly.

Alas you can't write life insurance policies into a Will. They are small amounts but he has very little to leave and just wanted to leave them a little pot of money. He was advised the best way to do that would be via a trust. Most insurance policies let you do it for free (by filling in some forms) but alas this company doesn't have that service.

In the will he can specify eg 'to my grandchildren Jack and Jill I bequeath the sum of £10000 to be divided equally.

I think there is some confusion here. There is no need to set up a trust.

If the policy is written in trust (NOT the same as putting the policy into a trust), the money will not form part of his estate. It will be paid out to whoever he has nominated as the beneficiaries. All he needs to do is make sure he has nominated his grandchildren.

If it is not written in trust, he absolutely can write it into his will and specify where he wants the money to go. However, as the payout forms part of his estate, it may increase the amount of IHT to be paid.

Sun Life will be able to advise whether the policy is written in trust.