How a Property Protection Trust works
Step one: you sever the joint tenancy. Instead of owning the house as joint tenants, you own it as tenants in common — typically 50/50. This is a simple Land Registry form and we handle it as part of the package.
Step two: we write a will for each of you that creates a trust on your death over your half share of the property. Your half does not pass to your partner. It goes into trust, with the children (or whoever you name) as the ultimate beneficiaries.
Step three: the trust gives the survivor a life interest — the right to live in the home for as long as they want, rent-free, and to move and buy a replacement property of equivalent value using trust funds. They never get kicked out. They never lose the lifestyle.
Step four: when the survivor dies (or chooses to leave the property), the trust ends and your half passes to your chosen beneficiaries. If the survivor had gone into care in the meantime, only their half was ever available for assessment.
The net effect: you have ring-fenced roughly half the value of the family home for your children, without restricting your partner's lifestyle one bit.
What PPTs cannot do
We are careful about the promises we make. Here's what a PPT won't do.
It won't protect the survivor's own share. If the survivor needs care, their half of the house is still in the means test. You are protecting half, not all.
It won't help if you set it up after care is already on the cards. Local authorities can treat late transfers as “deliberate deprivation of assets” and assess you as if you still owned what you gave away. PPTs need setting up while you are fit and well, not when the warning signs are flashing.
It won't save inheritance tax on its own. The spousal exemption handles that for most couples anyway.
It won't help if the surviving partner ignores the advice and changes the will after the first death. Which is why both wills must be done together and why we spend time making sure both of you genuinely understand what you're signing.
Done at the right time, for the right reasons, a PPT is one of the most cost-effective pieces of estate planning there is. Done wrongly or too late, it's worse than useless. That's why it matters who drafts it.
