LEXIATEAM was one of the first French law firms to become a trustee and cultivates its expertise in this legal management and guarantee instrument every day.

How does it work ?

French law allows the use of the “fiducie”, a very flexible tool, simple to set up and similar to the Anglo-Saxon trust.

A “fiducie” is a transaction by which one or more settlors transfer property, rights or securities, or a set of present or future property, rights or securities, to one or more trustees who, keeping them separate from their own patrimony, act for a specific purpose for the benefit of one or more beneficiaries (art. 2011 of the Civil Code). The property transferred will form a separate patrimony, distinct from the personal patrimony of the trustee.

Applications of the “fiducie”

The “fiducie” provides protection to the corporate officer whose patrimony is insufficiently protected in many tax or criminal cases where it cannot protect itself by the declaration of unseizability.

For companies:

• Possibility of protecting part of their assets in the event of bankruptcy,
• Possibility of assigning a particular asset to a specific debt, the rest of the patrimony being thus protected,
• Possibility to isolate the management of a business from other activities,
• Internal management of funds from employee savings, thus saving on management costs,
• Cooperation between companies without the creation of a joint-venture.

For individuals:

• Protection of inheritance and transmission with safeguards regarding the disposal of assets,
• Organization of the management of an estate in case of unavailability of the owner.

For asset management companies (business angels) :

• Tax neutrality,
• No limitation of the invested amounts and/or the number of investors,
• Simplicity of the legal tool.