When investing money, when looking for financing, and even, when you want to safeguard your heritage or own assets for the benefit of your loved ones, there is a word that describes and motivates a person from the thoughts to the actions; that word is: the trust.

If you do not have confidence, the option of saving money under the mattress does not represent a bad choice when we compare it with the alternative of giving the cash to a person or entity in which we do not trust.

That is basically what is known about this theme, a practice so old that comes from Roman times and from Latin: fideicommissum (fidei means trust and commissum means trustworthy). In Spanish, fiducia is the legal word used to describe precisely that: trust.

What are the parties are involved in a trust?

To have a better understanding of the concept, it’s necessary to know the parties involved:

• The person or company who owns the assets (which can be real estate, assets, money, bonus, among others). This is called the Trustor.
• The fiduciary is the person or entity responsible for administering and protecting the patrimony of the trustor.
• Finally, there is the trustee or beneficiary, who is the person or company that will benefit from the trustwhen the purpose for which the trust was set up is fulfilled.

The trustor, when by establishing this document, will give up part or all of his assets, to be controlled by the fiduciaryin order to achieve specific purposes. That means that the heritage cannot be counted as property of the Trustor but also as ownership of the fiduciary; in other words, the assets of the trust will be protected from any situation that may affect the personal property of the trustor or fiduciary.

Why choose a trust?

There are actually different kinds of trusts, some may be of administration, others guarantee, real estate, and others by way of living will. Everything will depend on the object by which it is constituted.

In order to give specific examples of the reasons for considering to set up, we will start with one of intimate character: the family.

The protect the family heritage:

In a family of three people, a mother, a father and a son or daughter, a trust might be the best option to ensure that the heritage are handled, exclusively, for the purpose of securing them in the abscense of the trustor. This means that the parents can be the trustors and the beneficiaries of the same trust, so nothing external can damage the assets placed in the trust agreement. The fiduciary can be a physical or a company with the capacity to acquire rights, incur obligations, and make decisions about the heritage according to the purposes established in the trust agreement; such as, if the parents die, the inheritance, the son or daughter receive a montly payment until he or she turns 25, age at which they will be able to have, with limitation, the entire trust fund, and at that moment, the trust is extinguished.

The protect the heritage of your business:

At a business level, a good example of a trust would be that of a person who owns a land and wants to obtain the greatest profit from it. The fiduciary, based on the trust agreement, will be responsible to carry out this prupose by managing the land, either by building a shopping center, apartments, what considers appropriate to meet the purpose of the trust.

The interdisciplinary legal team of ERP Lawyers & Associates has all the expertise and knowledge needed to assist you with any legal inquiries you may have regarding a trust. Feel free to contact us:

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• (506) 2520-1122
• eduardo@erplawyers.com