Protecting Your Most Valuable Asset
For most families the home is the largest thing they own and the thing they most want to pass on. A Property Protection Trust is the arrangement we use to protect your half of that home, so that when you die your share is held in trust for the people you have chosen rather than becoming somebody else's property outright.
Most couples own their home as joint tenants, which means that on the first death the whole property passes automatically to the survivor. Your will has no say in it. From that moment the entire house is theirs to leave, or to lose, and your children's inheritance depends on decisions you will not be there to influence.
A Property Protection Trust changes that without turning either of you out of your home. Your partner keeps the right to live there for the rest of their life, and your half is preserved behind them.
Severance of Joint Tenancy: The First Half of the Job
A Property Protection Trust is a two part process, and the part people rarely hear about is the one that makes it work. Before your share can be left in trust, it has to be capable of being left at all, which means changing the ownership from joint tenants to tenants in common. This is called severance of the joint tenancy.
In practical terms, we prepare a notice of severance and register the change at HM Land Registry, usually with a form A restriction on the title. Nothing about your living arrangements changes, nobody moves out, and your mortgage carries on exactly as before. What changes is the paperwork: you each now own a defined half share that your own will can direct.
The second part is the will itself, which places your half share into trust on your death and names the life tenant and the final beneficiaries. Without severance the will clause is powerless, and severance without the matching will simply means your half passes under the intestacy rules. We always do both together, which is why we quote for them as one piece of work.
How Property Protection Trusts Work
When the first of you dies, that person's half share passes into the trust created by their will. The survivor becomes the life tenant, with the right to occupy the property for the rest of their life, and the trustees hold the protected half for the final beneficiaries.
The trust can allow the life tenant to move house, so downsizing or moving nearer family remains possible, with the trust's share following into the new property. On the life tenant's death, the protected half passes to the beneficiaries named in the trust.
- Your chosen beneficiaries are named in the trust. Your half is held for your children, or whoever else you name, rather than passing to the survivor outright.
- Protection against sideways disinheritance. If the survivor remarries, or makes a new will leaving everything to a new family, your half is not theirs to give away.
- A defined half share. Because the halves are separate, each of you can make different choices and each half can be protected on its own terms.
- Distance from a beneficiary's problems. The protected share is not in your children's names yet, so it is not exposed to their divorce or their creditors while the trust runs.
Care Fees: What This Does and Does Not Do
This is the question we are asked most often, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch.
A Property Protection Trust protects the share belonging to the partner who has died. Because that half is held in trust and is not owned by the survivor, it is not normally counted as the survivor's capital if the survivor is later assessed by the local authority for care funding. Their own half is still theirs, and it can still be taken into account in that assessment. So the honest description is that the arrangement protects one half of the home, not the whole of it.
It is not a way of avoiding care fees, and we will never present it as one. If assets are given away or rearranged when care is already needed or clearly foreseeable, a council can treat that as deliberate deprivation of assets and assess as though you still held them. A Property Protection Trust put in place as ordinary will planning, well before any question of care arises, is a different matter entirely, and that is how we use it.
Anyone who promises you that your home is untouchable is overselling. What a Property Protection Trust is designed to do is hold the deceased partner's share for the people they chose, and we will explain exactly how that applies to your circumstances.
Key Considerations
A Property Protection Trust is a good answer for many families, though it needs to be set up properly:
- Ownership structure: the title must be held as tenants in common, so severance is part of the work.
- Trustee selection: choose people who will deal fairly with the life tenant and the final beneficiaries alike.
- Life tenant rights: we set out in writing who repairs, insures and pays the outgoings, and what happens if the life tenant wishes to move.
- Both wills together: the protection works best when both partners make matching wills at the same time.
- It is a will trust, so it only takes effect on death. Nothing changes for either of you during your lifetimes.
- If you also want to protect investments or income for a survivor, a Life Interest Will may be the wider structure you need. See our Life Interest Wills (IPDI) page, which explains the will structure that sits behind trusts of this kind.
Our Property Protection Trust Service
We provide expert guidance to help you determine if a Property Protection Trust is right for you:
- In-depth initial consultation.
- Assessment of property ownership and advice on changes.
- Clear explanation of benefits, limitations, and implications.
- Drafting of precise Will clauses.
- Guidance on selecting trustees.
- Coordination with conveyancing if needed.
- Integration with your wider estate plan.
Our specialist team will guide you through the entire process with clear, straightforward advice, including the severance of the joint tenancy and its registration at HM Land Registry. Where a matter calls for it, we work with a local solicitor and are able to cover any and all of your requirements.
Contact us today to explore how a Property Protection Trust can safeguard your home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a PPT affect my mortgage?
What is a PPT?
Why do I need a PPT?
How is a Life Interest Will different from a Property Protection Trust?
Working alongside a local solicitor
We work with a local solicitor and are able to cover any and all of your requirements. If in doubt, call us on 0800 048 7320 and ask, or use the contact form on our home page.
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Discuss how a Property Protection Trust can secure your home for the future. Contact us for a free consultation.
