Written by Jessica Falvey.

The latest release in Thomson Reuters’ collection of Australian Commercial Precedents offers a superb range of trust precedents to save subscribers time and money. The new ACP: Trusts Precedents service offers discretionary trust deeds, a private unit trust deed and a bare trust securities deed, as well as useful forms relating to stamp duty declarations and appointor and guardian consent.

Hybrid trust deeds will be added to the module in the first update in September, with further content to be added and updated on an ongoing basis.

These precedents give subscribers the tools to provide for a variety of client needs including:

• discretionary family trusts for private individual clients;
• private unit trusts for structured business contexts; and
• bare trusts for business nominee custodial arrangements.

Options available in the precedents

Optional clauses for a range of different situations are accompanied by notes which give subscribers drafting guidance.

For example, the discretionary trust deed option includes:

• wide general trustee discretionary powers, conveniently broken down into decision powers, investment powers, contractual powers, administrative powers and tax powers;
• a range of family group primary beneficiaries and eligible company and trust entities;
• trustee discretionary powers to distribute income on a trust net income or tax income basis; and
• trustee discretionary powers of determination and streaming of income and capital categories.

The discretionary trust deed also includes appointor and guardian alternatives.

The private unit trust deed provides for the creation, issue, registration, redemption, valuation and transfer of units and the making of income and capital distributions, with optional provisions to enable income streaming between different unit holder classes.

Time-saving Word processing features

As with all of the ACP modules, content is available in a search-able online database and in down-loadable Word documents. The Word documents are formatted to include automatic clause renumbering, updating of cross-references, automatically extracted tables of contents, fielded variables and drafting notes that can be viewed or hidden at the subscriber’s discretion.

Author information

Dr WG (Bill) Gough specialises in drafting commercial and finance precedents and was previously a partner at Allen Allen & Hemsley and Coudert Brothers International. He is also the author of the highly regarded Company Charges book.

Other ACP modules

ACP Trust Precedents joins existing and separately available modules in key areas of commercial law such as Share Sale precedents, Business Sale precedents, Employment, Insolvency, Finance and Security and Restraint and Confidentiality.