Trustees ignoring beneficiary - what can be done?

[MalinandGo]

A young adult family member has a trust, with two trustees. One a distant family member he doesn’t really know and one a solicitor who is paid for the role.

The trust has been paying him a living allowance during university. His living costs went up a year ago and he has been asking for an uplift as a result but has had no response. He’s now starting a PhD and would like to buy a flat with his trust money; he has emailed them to ask about budget etc and got no response. This is all getting quite urgent as he is moving in the autumn and is in debt from making up the shortfall over the last year.

They will only deal with him, not any other relatives, as he is over 18. He is autistic and finds phone calls very difficult, and was upset recently when he called and thought the receptionist was laughing at him, so now won’t even try.

We’d like to give him the wording for a stiff email referring to their duties to him but aren’t sure where to start. Any advice on what we need to put in?

What an awfully frustrating situation.
How about putting details into Gemini Ai and it will come up with a letter. Say you want a strongly worded letter of say 500 words.

Thank you. AI suggests that the two pieces of legislation he should cite are the Trustee Acts of 1925 and 2000. Does that sound about right? (I know how wrong AI can get my own area so not 100% on going that way without knowing whether it might make him look stupid.)

Please do not rely on AI for legal writing. It is not reliable as to citations and has been shown to make things up. In addition, as a legal friend observed “letter gets a letter” ie unless you are able actually to threaten legal action your so will just get fobbed off again.

Hire a solicitor to represent your son and get a real letter written.

He had a paid internship but really struggles with social interaction and never got taken on permanently at any of the random Saturday jobs he tried when younger. There is also the principle that he has a rather large trust fund that he should be able to access for financial support!

He’s not my son. We’re just trying to look after him in the absence of parents.

But I share the inclination not to resort to AI! We don’t want to escalate this to full legal representation if we could just help him write a pointed email that might remind them they are not behaving well here. (Not least because no one has ready funds for a lawyer to start it off.) Particularly I want to aim this at the one he is paying to act as trustee. I’m quite comfortable with formal writing and use of citations but just wanted some pointers from m’learned posters on where to start. We had to do similar to get them to tell him what funds he had. Sadly the legal opinion we did pay for at that time said they weren’t anywhere near meeting the bar for removal.

As PP have said, don't use AI to fudge a legal letter.

Email them again, reiterate your request, note that this is not the first instance of him being ignored and ask for their official complaints procedure, which you intend to pursue before referring the matter to the ombudsman.

You will need to exhaust that procedure before the ombudsman can be involved, but hopefully it will give them the kick up the arse that they need.

Either they are acting in good faith and won’t change their procedures for this boy or they are not acting on good faith. In the first case your letter won’t work and in the second case the letter is insufficient.

The family member is the one not acting in good faith. We know that from years of his nonsense. I suspect the solicitor is lazy but just not getting enough of a kick, as in the past he has been able to get the other one to act when not to do so would be clearly a breach.

I really do have no intention of using AI and I never wanted to create a fake legal letter. Just a firm email, to come from him, pointing out their legal duties to get them moving. The firm’s complaints procedure is a good idea though, thank you. Whether it’ll get any purchase on the non-professional trustee or not.

I really wish you all the luck. This sounds so difficult.

Thank you. It makes me so angry that they’re behaving like this to a vulnerable young adult.

It's so odd of the family member, almost like they don't want the trustee to have the money. They need to be reminded that this fund indeed belongs to the young man.

What age does he inherit the money fully?

He should contact citizens advice. They should be able to provide more guidance on the matter.
Once you know what you want to say, I would personally use AI to construct the letter. You’re not pretending it’s a legal letter in this instance, you’re formally attempting to open up communication. AI can be a great tool to support with drafting succinct letters / emails. Citizens advice can guide you on what, if any, laws are broken & also explain your rights. It should be most people’s first port of call for most things.

He should speak to another solicitor. Sounds like he ought to consider applying to the court for the removal of the trustees.

Exactly.

Refusing to deal with anyone else communicating on his behalf could be disability discrimination. It might be an idea to state clearly in the letter that that he has social communication difficulties because of his autism and wants Malin to speak on his behalf as an accommodation.

They absolutely won’t speak to anyone else, and I think even trying would inflame the situation with the family member.

I’m quite comfortable writing the email. But where to look for the appropriate legal elements was why I started this thread!

@Collaborate we’ve had legal advice in the past that the bar to remove trustees is in practice far higher than this sort of behaviour, not to mention a drawn out process, and our family doesn’t have the upfront money to pay for legal representation in any case at the moment unfortunately.

I feel rather guilty bothering CA given how in demand their advice is from people in far worse situations (I agree they are an amazing resource.) As I said, we’re quite capable of understanding legislation etc - I just found it rather tricky from a starter internet perspective to work out which the most relevant things to look at were as failure to communicate isn’t the top of the trustee sin list.

Unfortunately it’s very unclear when he gains full control of the money. I won’t go into it but there are quite a few complications about this. I think that definitely will be one for him to take legal advice on in the future.

Do you know the terms of the trust? Can you get a copy of the will that set it up? I ask because if this is a discretionary trust it may give the trustees very wide powers to decide on how the money is spent. eg they may not even have to pay the money to the young man at all.

I am assuming that the trust was set up because the young man was deemed to be a vulnerable person (youth/autism). That would seem to have been a sensible decision. It has paid out living costs at University - another sensible decision. Was the amount paid out in line with advice on the relevant university web site on living costs? I could see that trustees would not automatically increase the amount just becuse a young person said they needed more.

I would also expect trustees to be wary of a request from a vulnerable young person to buy a property while still doing post graduate studies. Very few young people in this position would be contemplating a property purchase. Renting would be the norm at this stage of life.

I am not sure what OPs relationship to the young man is - but again I can understand why trustees would be reluctant to deal with OPand not the young adult.

What is surprising is the reluctance to communicate, but from the post it sounds as if the young man may also be partially responsible for this. I would have expected the trustees, particularly the solicitor, to have had a one off meeting with the young man and anyone he chose to accompany him - to explain the terms of the trust and how they intended to manage it.

If he is going to challenge their decisions he will need to appoint his own lawyer. But before spending money on that I would try to establish the exact terms of the trust, and then address the trustees in writing asking for a meeting within x period of time. He should be able to take a trusted friend with him.

Presumably both parents are either dead or absent / without competence, but someone set up the trust with the named family member who they must have considered, at the time, to be the best person for the job. Are there other ‘reserve trustees’ named in the event the trustee is not undertaking the role properly?

I also wonder whether they may disagree about buying a property at this stage given most young students / graduates do not own their own property and given, to date, the young person is struggling with the requirements of Saturday jobs and internships, they may be acutely aware the trust fund may be needed to support him over the long term. Does this young person receive disability related support / benefits?

Yes, we’ve seen the trust. As I said it’s quite complicated and lawyers have discussed this in the past. The trust was established when he was under ten but again lots of circumstances around it that make it more complicated than the average trust.

The living costs were agreed between him and the trustees and the amount was perfectly OK. The costs rose in the final year because his rent rose basically. The agreement was to cover his rent and give him an amount to live on, which was broadly in line with what his university recommended for students.

The trustees have needed pushing at every single stage to engage with first his guardians and then him. The reasons for the family member’s reluctance are understood (if deeply frustrating) but the fact that a paid solicitor behaves this is enraging. They have never met him nor suggested it, even though under the terms of the trust they are meant to meet him annually (and costs are provided for this).

If they object to him buying that’s fine - they need to have a conversation about their reasons for that with him. Just ignoring him however, and leaving him in limbo on how he will live in the autumn, is not acceptable. He’s looking to buy partly as an investment and partly for security. He’s found renting, and living with other people, very stressful and being able to live alone in his own home is what he wants. They need to discuss this with him - maybe even get to know him - and decide whether they think it’s a good use of so some of his fund. Renting in the place he will be doing his PhD is very expensive, and his stipend won’t go far, so he’s getting stressed.

I’m sure he hasn’t been as persistent with them as he could have been (and as we were forced to be for years before he turned 18) but he’s neurodivergent and has just been doing intense work for his finals so we’re cutting him some slack.

we’ve had legal advice in the past that the bar to remove trustees is in practice far higher than this sort of behaviour

You need to get another opinion. It may be that, when you consulted a lawyer previously, it was simply viewed as antagonism between your family member and the trustees, which is not enough to get trustees removed. However, it now appears that the relationship has broken down to the point where the trustees are failing to perform their duties. If that is the case, it is time for them to be removed.

@prh47bridge they have behaved like this (actually at the time it was even worse as they were refusing any funding at all) and apparently unless they are being actively corrupt removing them is very difficult and could be stressful and expensive. Given how many very respectable family members and friends, who know him well, were willing to take on trusteeship, we did ask if they’d be willing to step aside but they refused.

Given that they do now at least fund him to an extent I think the case for removing them would be weaker now than it was then, regardless of their failure to respond to emails. As I said, my suspicion is just that the solicitor has to kick the family member to act when requests are made and just isn’t prioritising that, so an email to remind him sharply of his responsibility here was the thinking.

One manifestation of the beneficiary’s autism is hyperlexia so unfortunately his communications do often sound rather comical in the way he uses words and may be, I think, tricky to understand and therefore likely to slip down the priority list.

Are you one of the guardians? You mention the trustees motivations are understood, what are they and is this something they have stated?

On the housing issue, he could rent a flat, he doesn’t need to buy to live alone.