A wealth of trusts in the Channel Islands

• Explains why semi-contentious trust practitioners are in demand in the Channel Islands.

In the past four decades, the trust industry in the Channel Islands has witnessed enormous growth and change, precipitating a corresponding evolution within the private wealth legal sector which has adapted to meet the increasingly complex needs of its clients. 

The 1970s, 1980s and 1990s saw a surge in the number of trusts being established in Guernsey and Jersey as a result of an increase in the sophistication of international tax planning, the UK's exchange controls and the migration of wealthy residents to the islands.

At that early stage, the lawyers servicing the growing body of trust companies tended to have broad, mixed practices, encompassing other legal disciplines such as corporate law, banking and litigation.

However, as the industry grew, and as trusts evolved from simple vanilla vehicles to the more complex, bespoke structures that began to emerge in the 2000s, lawyers started