Trusts

Leave your legacy in safe hands, and give back to the ones you love by setting up a trust.

What is a trust?

Trusts allow you to support the people and causes you care about most, now and into the future.

Our experts can help you with setting up a trust, and can also become a professional trustee of your existing trust following a full review process.

Types of trusts

Family trust

Hold and protect your legacy now and into the future with a family trust.

Inheritance trust

An inheritance trust protects your assets and supports your loved ones after you’re gone.

Prepaid funeral trust

Set money aside with a prepaid funeral trust to make your passing easier on the ones you love.

Charitable trust

Give back to the causes you care about most, on an ongoing basis, by setting up a charitable trust.

Non income earning trust

Ensuring your trust is working best, for you.

Why Public Trust?

It’s in our name for a reason - we’re New Zealand’s largest and oldest trustee organisation. We’ve been helping people like you protect their legacy for almost 150 years.

People like us because we’re independent, impartial and professional. Financial decisions between family members can get tricky. We’re here to be your impartial, trusted adviser to manage and make financial matters from a place of pragmatism, not emotion.

We like to make the tricky things simple. Our team of experts in law, accounting, tax, charity, trusteeship, and more are always on hand to answer your questions and provide guidance to ensure you always know what you’re signing up for – and what’s best for you.

Together, we’ll ensure that your trust is maintained and protected like it should be. For any questions or to start creating your trust, get in touch with our team today. We’d love to chat.

Talk to our experts

If you have a trust or are a trustee, it’s really important that you know about changes to trust law in New Zealand. The Trusts Act 2019 passed on 30 July 2019 and replaced the Trustee Act 1956.

The Act clarifies and modernises existing trust law and comes with some significant changes. Click here to view our Trust Reform Brochure

The Trusts Act puts into law the duties of trustees and requires much greater transparency around trust activity.

Trustees face increased compliance requirements.
Beneficiaries now need to be told that they are a beneficiary of a trust and regularly provided with information about the trust without them needing to request it. Information can only be withheld in exceptional circumstances.
The age of majority for when a beneficiary will be entitled to the balance of their trust will change from 20 years to 18 years of age.

Trusts are an important part of estate planning and provide an excellent option for managing assets under the right circumstances.

However, for trusts existing before the Trusts Act, it could mean that:

compliance duties will increase the time and cost of administering some trusts, meaning some are no longer cost-effective
greater transparency will put things in the open that some trust owners might prefer to keep private.

If you’re a trust settlor or trustee you need to start administering your trust in line with the new law from 30 January 2021.

We recommend thinking about whether:

you’re willing and able to undertake the increased obligations
you’re comfortable with the increased information provided to beneficiaries
the reasons for setting up the trust are still relevant
the trust will offer the same protection
the trust will still be cost-effective with the extra trust compliance requirements

Public Trust offers a trust review service to help anyone wanting to discuss the best way forward for their trust.

The service is set up specifically with the Trusts Act in mind. It’s ideal for anyone who isn’t sure whether their trust is still relevant under the new legislation or is unsure of their duties.

We can also step in to provide professional trustee services.

If you’d like to find out more about our review service, discuss the Trusts Act more generally or where Public Trust can help, give us a call on 0800 371 471 or email [email protected].

Trustee Tax Changes 2019

The Government proposal to lift the Trustee tax rate to 39% from 33% has been passed. This new tax rate took effect from 1 April 2024.

For more information about current trust tax, visit the Inland Revenue website.

Find out more