Practice Drills: Structuring a Family Trust for Succession

A simulation course for HNIs, business owners and family office advisers who already understand how private trusts work in India and now want to build one. You are handed the file of a fictional Pune promoter family: a founder in his late sixties holding a stake in a listed auto-components company, an unlisted holding company, commercial and residential property, a son running a leveraged side business, a daughter settled in Singapore and two minor grandchildren. Working as the family's succession adviser, you map every asset to its succession risk, choose the right vehicle, assign the trust roles, draft the deed clauses that matter, settle listed promoter shares without triggering an open offer, move unlisted shares and property into the trust, test every transfer for gift tax, capital gains and clubbing, compute trust tax, handle distributions to the non-resident beneficiary, stress-test asset protection against a creditor claim and tie the trust to a family constitution. You finish by writing the structuring memo and running a full case on a new family. All family figures are illustrative; the rules are real and stated as at the date of last review, under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 and the Income-tax Act, 2025.