Trusts can legitimately be set up to preserve assets. But abuse of a trust is unfortunately all too common in the event of divorce when one spouse decides to transfer assets to a trust before a divorce to decrease the value of their estate, sometimes to nil.
Speaking at the 14th Annual FISA Conference on 11 September, Professor Bradley Smith, a senior researcher at the IIE’s Varsity College and an Extraordinary Professor of Private Law at the University of the Free State, unpacked what he termed “divorce planning”, citing the case law in some detail, where there are some existing anomalies.
Read the piece here.