Should a Solicitor Be a Trustee for Your Children's Money?

If you leave money to young children, someone has to look after it until they are old enough to have it. Those people are your trustees, and choosing them is one of the most consequential decisions in a will, yet it is usually made last and fastest. You have two broad options. Family members, who are free but often untrained and sometimes conflicted. Or a professional, such as a solicitor, who is competent and neutral but charges the fund. The honest answer to which a bereaved child needs is: usually not one or the other, but a mix of both.

The question matters because a trustee is not a figurehead. They hold and invest the money, decide what is released and when, keep records, deal with tax, and answer to the children years later for how they handled it. A well-meaning relative who has never done any of this can make expensive mistakes. A solicitor who has done it a hundred times will not, but every hour they spend comes out of your children's inheritance.

So the real decision is not loyalty versus expertise. It is how to get both into the room without paying more than the fund can bear or leaving it in hands that cannot cope.

The short answer: what a trustee is for

A child cannot legally hold significant money or property in their own name. So when a will, a life policy or an intestacy leaves them a sum, it does not go to them directly. It is held on trust by trustees, who look after it for the child's benefit until a set age. Under the intestacy rules that age is 18. In a will you can set it higher, holding the money back to 21 or 25 if you would rather your child did not receive a large sum the week they leave school.

While the money is held, the trustees do real work. They keep it safe, invest it sensibly, and use it for the child's benefit: school costs, activities, a contribution to the household raising them, later perhaps a car, a course or a deposit. They also handle the trust's tax and keep accounts. When the child reaches the age you chose, the trustees hand over what is left. Everything that happens in between depends on the judgement and competence of the people you named, which is why the choice deserves more than a moment's thought.

Family trustees: free, and where free gets expensive

The instinct is to appoint a sibling, a parent, or a close friend. They love the child, they will not charge, and they understand the family. For a straightforward trust and a modest sum, that can be exactly right, and most family trustees do a perfectly good job.

But free has hidden costs. A relative who has never run a trust may not know they are legally obliged to invest the money rather than leave it in a current account, to keep the trust's affairs separate from their own, or to account to the child later. Honest mistakes made in good faith are still breaches of trust, and they can cost the fund real money. There is also mortality: the family trustees you pick in your thirties may themselves be elderly or gone by the time your child is grown, and a trust with no surviving trustee is a problem in itself.

The sharpest issue is conflict. If the same person is both the guardian raising your child and the trustee controlling the money, they sit on both sides of every payment, deciding how much of the fund to release into the household they run. That is not a reason never to do it, but it is a reason to structure around it, which we look at directly in the wider guide. The same tension appears in reverse in a second family, where a trustee who is also a beneficiary of the same estate has every incentive to interpret things their own way, a risk we cover in how remarriage can quietly cut children out through the back door.

Professional trustees: what you are buying, and what it costs the fund

A professional trustee is a solicitor, an accountant, or a trust corporation appointed to act in that role for a fee. What you are buying is real: technical competence with investment, tax and trust law, continuity that does not depend on one person's health, meticulous record-keeping, and above all neutrality. A professional has no stake in the family's quarrels and no personal interest in the fund, so they can say no to an unreasonable request without it becoming a Christmas-dinner argument.

The cost is equally real, and it is paid by your children. A professional trustee charges the fund, either at an hourly rate or as a percentage of the assets they manage, and those charges must be authorised, normally by a charging clause in the will, so a professional is entitled to be paid for work that a lay trustee would do for nothing. For a large fund that will run for many years and involves property, investments or a business, that cost buys competence you genuinely need and is often worth paying. For a modest sum that a sensible relative could manage until a child turns 18, professional charges can eat into an inheritance that was never large to begin with. The rule of thumb is to weigh the size and complexity of the fund against the cost, not to reach for a solicitor by reflex or to rule one out on principle.

The structure most families actually want

Framed as family versus professional, the choice is a false one. The structure most families are better off with uses both. You appoint one or two trusted relatives, who know the child, the family and what you would have wanted, alongside one professional who supplies the technical competence and the neutral hand. Family knowledge and legal expertise then sit in the same room, and each checks the other.

This mixed model also solves the guardian conflict. The relative raising your child can ask the trustees for money, while a professional co-trustee makes sure each release is genuinely for the child and is properly recorded. The guardian is funded without being their own paymaster. It is the same principle we recommend for separating the person who raises a child from the person who controls the money, and it is especially valuable where a second marriage brings two sets of children with competing interests, or where money is meant for the children rather than an ex-partner's household, as in paying the children and not the ex through a trust. Whoever you choose, a good will also names reserve trustees to step in if a first choice cannot act, in the same way you would name a reserve carer, a point covered in naming reserve successors for carers and adult children.

How many trustees, and why two is the floor

Numbers are not arbitrary here. Appoint at least two trustees. Two means decisions are shared rather than resting on one person's judgement, and there is cover if one dies, moves abroad or wants to step down. It also matters legally: where a trust holds land or the proceeds of selling it, two trustees, or a trust corporation, are needed to give a valid receipt for the money, so a sole individual trustee can find themselves unable to complete a property sale on their own.

There is a ceiling too. Where the trust holds land, no more than four trustees can be appointed. Beyond practical limits, more trustees means more people who must agree before anything happens, which slows a trust down rather than strengthening it. For most families raising young children, two or three is the sensible range: enough for cover and shared judgement, few enough to actually make decisions. Where children might be raised separately by different relatives, coordinating one fund across two households is its own challenge, which is worth anticipating alongside the risk of siblings being split between different guardians.

Removing a trustee when it goes wrong

Even a careful choice can go wrong. A trustee falls out with the family, becomes unwell, stops responding, or simply turns out not to be up to it. What happens next depends almost entirely on a decision you make now, when you draft the will.

The cheap route is to build in an express power. Your will can name a person, sometimes called an appointor, who has the power to appoint new trustees and remove existing ones. If that power is there, a poor trustee can be replaced with a signature and a deed, quickly and privately. If it is not there, the alternatives are far worse: the beneficiaries, if they are all adults and entitled, may be able to force a change, but while your children are minors they cannot, and the fallback is an application to the court, which is slow, public and expensive, and comes out of the very fund you were trying to protect. Almost nobody regrets building the power in. Plenty of families regret leaving it out. Choosing the right people in the first place still matters most, and our guide to wills, guardianship and children and the question of whether a sibling who inherits the caring role should also hold the money are both worth reading before you decide.

Where the fund comes from, and Scotland and Northern Ireland

One thing worth saying plainly: for most families with young children, the fund the trustees will manage does not exist yet. It is created by life cover. A level term policy written in an appropriate trust pays a fixed lump sum straight to your trustees on your death, outside your estate, so the money is there for them to manage from the start rather than tied up while the estate is administered. Deciding who your trustees are and arranging the cover that funds them are really the same planning job, and if nothing is in place you can compare life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker help size it against the years your children would depend on it.

The trustee rules above are those of England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own trust law. Scotland is the important difference for parents, because a child there gains legal capacity at 16 and can generally call for their inheritance then rather than at 18, which shortens the runway your trustees have and makes the choice of age and people even more pointed. We set that out in why a child in Scotland inherits at 16, not 18. Northern Ireland keeps 18 as the age but has its own legislation, so trust and guardianship wording drafted for England should be reviewed against local law. Wherever you are, the underlying advice is the same: appoint at least two capable people, get expertise and family knowledge both into the room, and give someone the power to fix it if a choice goes wrong.

Frequently asked questions

Should I use a solicitor as trustee for my children's money?

A professional trustee brings experience, continuity and no family conflict, but charges the fund, either hourly or as a percentage. For a large fund running for many years, that cost can be worth paying. For a modest one it rarely is, so weigh the size and complexity of the fund against the charge rather than reaching for a solicitor by default.

How many trustees should I appoint?

At least two, and no more than four where land is held. Two means decisions are shared and there is cover if one dies or steps down. Many families appoint two relatives alongside a professional, so family knowledge and technical competence sit in the same room and each keeps the other honest.

Can a trustee be removed if things go wrong?

Yes. Your will can give a named person the power to appoint and remove trustees, which is much the cheapest route. Otherwise the beneficiaries, if they are all adults, or a co-trustee may have to apply to the court, which is slow and expensive, so it is well worth building the power to remove into the will from the start.