Trusts in St. Lucia : The Best of Both Worlds?

If there was to be a 'Holy Grail' of offshore trust administration, it would probably be the ability to have a trust subject to an historically well developed trust law, a law in which there are many, well known and respected lawyers and judges well versed, a law which allows the trust to be enforced in accordance with well established equitable principles in which those lawyers and judges are equally well versed and experienced in applying, where trustees are well regulated and yet conduct their trusteeships in the active and attentive style expected of offshore trustees, rather than that of onshore administrators of deceaseds' estates, and with no local tax on the trustees, the trust assets, the beneficiaries or the settlors (be they called that, the 'asset contributors', or whatever). This 'Holy Grail', like the original, might be the stuff of dreams or glorious myths; but it might be actually before you, waiting to be picked up and triumphantly carried off.

Whenever articles are written, papers presented or discussions held about the laws of offshore centres, they tend to focus upon the latest pieces of new legislation introduced for those wanting to make use of that legislation.

This article does that in part, but mostly it is concerned with legislation other than that which is normally the focus of such articles. For generally they will be about those separate sets of legislation ("suites" appears to be the vogue collective noun) enacted for use by outsiders, whether or not ring-fenced from locals - although traditionally there would be this exclusionary practice.

The article about St. Lucia's legislation by Mr. Anthony Bristol, which also appears in this issue of Offshore Investment, is typical of the type, ably setting out the recent changes to and overall position of the generally acceptable "suite" of legislation offered for use by St. Lucia, without ring-fencing.

These separate sets of laws concerning, as they all seem to do, international companies or trusts, offshore insurance companies, or whatever, and particularly the exemption from local taxes found in them, be they in St. Lucia or elsewhere, will perhaps have been introduced because the laws that would otherwise apply in those jurisdictions are considered to be ineffective or unattractive to achieve certain purposes. Given the tendency to ring-fencing, amending the 'local' laws would rarely have been an option, even if it was considered by those advising the governments concerned.

Even without ring-fencing, and even if considered, amending the already existing laws would generally be seen as a more cumbersome and worrisome procedure than introducing new ones - often because the creative thought involved in drafting the new laws adopted for 'international'...

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