Preparing a trustee's minute: discretionary (family) trusts

The trustee's minute serves as a record of a trustee's resolution or decision made under a trust deed.

One key issue faced by trustees and accountants is how to make the resolutions correctly and prepare minutes to both properly reflect and give effect to the decisions.

Trustees of discretionary trusts can make decisions:

• where there are individual trustees — at meetings;
• where there is a corporate trustee with more than 1 director — at meetings of directors, or by all of the directors signing a set of resolutions; or
• where there is a corporate trustee with 1 director — by the sole director signing a set of resolutions.

To assist with a trustee's proper record keeping, Cleardocs is developing a range of meeting minutes and resolutions for administration of a discretionary (family) trust. These cover:

• establishment of the trust;
• opening a bank account for the trust;
• distribution of trust income;
• amendment of the trust deed;
• appointment of a trustee in place of a retiring trustee;
• appointment of an appointor; and
• winding up of trust.

Keep an eye on our site in coming weeks…

More Cleardocs information on related topics

You can read earlier ClearLaw articles on a range of trust topics.

Order Cleardocs trust packages

• Discretionary (Family) Trust
• Change of Trustee Discretionary Trust
• Unit Trust - fixed
• Unit Trust - non-fixed
• Change of Trustee Unit Trust
• Hybrid Trust
• Service Agreement