Establish a Unit Trust
 

Before Completing the Form

Your accountant or financial adviser may have recommended the establishment of a Unit Trust.

You can use this facility to instruct us in relation to establishment of a unit trust. It is important that you understand the purpose behind a unit trust before you apply this structure to your affairs. If you have not already done so, please consult us or your accountant to determine if this is the best option for you. We regularly review the terms of our unit trust deed to ensure that it complies with State and Commonwealth legislation, tax law and succession issues.
 

Guidelines

The following guidelines may assist you when making your selections.
These guidelines can be downloaded by clicking here.

Name of Trust
You do not need to check to see if the proposed name of your trust is available. The trust will not be a trading entity; the trust name is only an identifiable feature of the terms documenting the provisions of the trust (the trust deed).

Settlor
The Settlor is the person who will pay a nominal sum to the trustee to establish the Trust. The Settlor is not eligible to derive any benefit from the Trust, so you should avoid choosing a potential unit holder to be the Settlor.

Trustee
You may have been advised to have a corporate trustee for your trust, and you may have already instructed us in relation to the inception of the proposed corporate trustee by completing the Company Instruction Form. Please note that we cannot finalise the trust documents until the corporate trustee has been registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and has been allocated an Australian Company Number. We can however complete the documents in draft form for your perusal.

Alternatively, one or more individuals can act as trustee of a unit trust.

The Trustee has the power to make investments on behalf of the trust, to make income distributions to the unit holders, to accumulate any income for future distributions and to make limited variations (with the consent of the unit holders) to the terms of the trust.

Unit Holders
Each Unit Holder is entitled to receive distributions of income and capital through the trust according to the number of units held. In some instances, there may be particular classes of unit holders, and each class of units may accord different voting rights or distribution rights.
The Unit Holders effectively control the trust. They have the power to appoint and remove trustees of the Trust. A majority of the Unit Holders must agree to any variations proposed to be made by the Trustee to the terms of the trust deed, and the trustee cannot make any changes to the terms of the trust without the consent of the unit holders.

Calls
The Trustee may choose to make a call to Unit Holders to pay some or all of the amount outstanding in relation to each unit. There is provision within the trust deed to specify the amount of the call and the period within which those calls may be made.
 

Completing the Form

Click here to fill out the form on-line.

Click here to download the form to fill-in and manually forward to us.