Protecting Your Bridlington Property: Trusts, Wills, and the Family Home in East Yorkshire

Protecting Your Bridlington Property: Trusts, Wills, and the Family Home in East Yorkshire

Your Home, Your Legacy

For most families in Bridlington and across the East Riding, the home is the most valuable thing they own. It may be a terrace in the Old Town, a bungalow in the Queensgate Extensions, a cottage in Flamborough or Bempton, or a newer house on one of the estates. It represents a lifetime of work.

Wanting it to pass to the right people, your children and grandchildren, is natural. It is one of the most common reasons people contact Safe Harbour Legal.

Protecting your home takes more than a will. How the property is owned, the type of will you make and whether a trust is right for you all matter. Getting it wrong can affect your family for generations.

How Property Ownership Affects Your Estate Plan

Start with how you and your partner own your home. In England and Wales there are two forms of joint ownership, and the difference matters.

If you own your home as joint tenants, your share passes automatically to the other owner when you die, whatever your will says. This is called "survivorship" and it overrides any will or trust. For many couples that is fine.

If you want to protect your share, for example so that it reaches your children rather than your partner's future spouse, you may need to "sever" the joint tenancy. That turns you into tenants in common. Each of you then owns a defined share, and that share can be dealt with in your will, including by putting it into a trust.

Severing a joint tenancy is a simple legal step, but it must be done properly and with an eye on the rest of your estate plan. Aaron charges a separate fixed fee for it, listed on the fees page.

Life Interest Trusts: The Most Common Protection

The most common way to protect the family home is a life interest trust written into your will. It works like this.

On the first death, the deceased's share of the home goes into a trust. The surviving partner is the "life tenant": they have the right to live in the home for the rest of their life. When they die, the trust passes the share to the final beneficiaries, usually the children.

The survivor keeps a roof over their head. The deceased's share is protected from remarriage, new partners, creditors and other risks.

This matters most where one or both partners have children from an earlier relationship. Without protection, the intestacy rules or a simple mirror will can send your share of the home to people you never meant to benefit.

Care Fees: What a Trust Can and Cannot Do

Many people in East Yorkshire worry that their home will be used to pay for residential care. Care home fees are high, and the thought of losing the family home is distressing.

Some firms have sold "asset protection trusts" claiming they shield the home from care fee assessments. Regulators, consumer groups and Age UK have criticised many of these products. Several of the companies that sold them have since closed.

A council can look through a transfer into a trust and treat it as a "deliberate deprivation of assets" if the main reason for it was to avoid paying for care. If that happens, the council assesses your finances as though the transfer never took place.

That does not mean trusts are never right. A trust set up for genuine estate planning reasons, such as protecting assets in a blended family, providing for a vulnerable beneficiary or managing inheritance tax, stands on much firmer ground. Avoiding care fees alone is not a sound basis for a trust, and a solicitor who says otherwise is not giving honest advice.

Aaron will say plainly what a trust can and cannot achieve, rather than sell a product that may not deliver.

Local Considerations

Bridlington's property market has features that affect estate planning.

Holiday properties and chalets. Many residents own holiday lets, seaside chalets or caravan park homes. Planning restrictions can affect their value and how they are treated in your estate. Make sure your will and estate plan cover them.

Mixed-use properties. Some Bridlington properties have a shop, guest house or café on the ground floor with a flat above. These raise questions about business property relief, valuation and the practical side of administering the estate.

Properties in need of repair. Some older properties in the town need a lot of work. If you are leaving a property in your will, think about whether the beneficiary can afford to keep it up, or whether a discretionary trust giving your trustees flexibility would suit better.

Every fee for this work, what happens in order and how a home visit is arranged are on Aaron’s page as a wills solicitor in Bridlington.

Getting Your Property Plan Right

Start with a conversation. Bring your questions, your worries and your family circumstances. The answer may be simple, or you may need something more involved. Either way, the first step is to ask.

Aaron Johnson is a solicitor and TEP (a full member of STEP, the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners) based in Bridlington. He knows the local property market and the concerns of local families.

This guide is intended as general legal information and does not constitute legal advice. Safe Harbour Legal is a trading name of Legal Studio, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.