This year sees the continuation of the practical "How do I….. " series of Trust seminars where the emphasis is on the sharing of practical advice and skills from a trust practitioner on the prevention of the common errors being made in the creation and particularly the administration of trusts.

A lack of the appreciation of the unique South African trust law system often causes the average person involved with trusts, be it as trustee and trust beneficiary to end up with trust deeds of which 85% and more, if challenged, can fail on its validity, not to mention deficiencies in form, structure and the parties involved or a lack of powers to administer the trust properly.

Practitioners also often accept trustee appointments without a true appreciation of what the office entails and all the pitfalls awaiting them.

In this half-day practical seminar, at the hand of real life examples the "how do I go about?" of the administration of trusts and its tax implications after having created the trust will be discussed. Apart from these, as usual, an update since the previous year’s trust seminar on what is relevant to trustees and trust law will also be done.

The following key topics will inter alia be discussed:

• How do I assure that the trust I am administering is validly created and if not what then?
• How do I assure that the trustee appointments are correctly done and valid and if not what are all the implications?
• How do I determine the "independence" of the so called "independent outsider" trustee and is it different in the case of a company director or cc member?
• How do I determine when a trust becomes a person's alter ego for divorce and other purposes such as estate duty and insolvency and how can it be prevented?
• How do I decide when to join a trust as a party to divorce proceedings and when not?
• How do I deal with a conflict of interest with investments and personal interest etc as trustee and beneficiary, when administering a trust?
• How do I deal with passive, over active or hostile co-trustees or as beneficiary with hostile trustees?
• How do I as trustee deal with hostile beneficiaries and what are the beneficiaries' rights?
• How do I (and can I) rectify the most common errors made with trusts in South Africa?
• How do I exercise my discretion as trustee within the different degrees of discretion normally given to trustees and how does it affect "vesting"?
• How do I determine when discrimination by the trustees is unfair against one or more beneficiaries?
• How do I determine whether and when the trustees have to account to beneficiaries and to whom else do they have to account?
• How do I count the number of members of a close corporation where the cc interest is held by a trust?
• How do I vary a trust deed without falling into the most common stipulatio alteri and invalidity trap?
• How do I use the recent Capital Gains Tax and Transfer duty exemptions regarding trust property without falling into unplanned tax traps?
• How do I structure loan accounts with trusts to optimize protection and prevent unnecessary tax implications?
• How do I deal with the taxation of offshore non-resident trust beneficiaries?

Professor Willie van der Westhuizen is a regular speaker at seminars and columnist in newspapers. He is a director and practising attorney at Millers Inc, specialising in Trust Law and Estate Planning regularly doing legal audits on trust deeds from all over South Africa and sharing his findings and research with delegates in this seminar. He also serves as Extraordinary Professor in Private Law at the University of the Free State with specific instruction in Trust and Estate Planning Law.

He is co-author of a LexisNexis publication entitled Wills and Trusts and has written and published numerous articles on Trust Law and related topics. For more than a decade and a half he has presented seminars on these topics to lawyers, accountants and other advisers countrywide. He has delivered papers at International Bar Association conferences in Strasbourg, New York and Hong Kong on such topics as "Restrictions on testamentary freedom", "Application possibilities of the trust in South Africa" and "Business trusts for privately owned businesses in South Africa"

Dates and venues
04 October 2010 – Cape Town, Vineyard Hotel (021-657 4590)
05 October 2010 – Port Elizabeth, Summerstrand Hotel (041-583 3131)
06 October 2010 – Durban, Elangeni Hotel (031-362 1300)
07 October 2010 – Pretoria, CSIR Convention Centre (012-841 3884)
08 October 2010 – Johannesburg, Grayston Hotel (011-783 5262)

The Fees (VAT Inclusive) 
One delegate – R1900.00
Two or more delegates – R1710.00 per delegate