Just had to start some trusts accounts off for some old trusts. Set the trustees a task to locate the missing £10 notes used to create the trusts so that I could balance off the trust balance sheets.
The trustees havc come back having hit a brick wall (they have better things to do, actually).
Not really that bothered because after up to 80 or 125 years I am sure the £10 will be a mere flea-bite. Just inquisitive!
All I know is that the tenner is passed across the solicitor's table, he pockets the £10, and the trust is created.
But the big (actually little) question is, where do all these £10 notes end up?
Client account (maybe sometimes - but for a mere £10?). Pocket money? Train ticket home? Kids pocket money? Black hole? Lap dancer? The list is possibly endless.
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We were advised to pin them to the Trust deeds, but ours were £5 trusts not super, glamorous, £10 ones.
Man, you must be ancient!
Have never seen a £5 trust, only £10 ones and more recently the odd £50 one.
The £10 doesn't go to the solicitor.
If, for example, you have three trusts set up at the same time, look at the serial number on the tenner. Chances are it's the same one!
It is a £10 that is held by the settlor (who is also usually a trustee), and it probably goes back in their pocket, after the photocopying exercise:
Dr Loan to trustee £10
Cr Trust fund £10
Put them in an envelope and into the safe. And did you have them changed when the "old" £10 note ceased to be legal tender?
I was thinking just the same. Expect it would have been the solicitor's problem. Not mine.
I have seen many deeds with old £10 notes attached. While old notes may not be legal tender any more, the Bank of England will exchange all old banknotes on request.
We also have many pilot trusts and client accounts with £10 in them.
The solicitors we use just charge an extra £10 when billing the settlor and then put this £10 in separate bank account at their end, to be transferred if/when a trust bank account is opened.
And that's seems the way it should be. At least you can physically see the whereabouts of the tenner.
In the trust accounts it will therefore be included in the bank balance.
For the other two trusts I have been looking at the trustees have not a clue where their £10 notes have gone. And they just cannot even (rightly) be bothered to give it a second thought now.
Just makes it that trifle more difficult to balance the books correctly when you do not know who, if anyone, has the missing tenner.
This is comparable to the situation I found when I was lumbered with auditing the accounts of dozens of dormant subsidiaries of a large and now long gone construction group in the late 1970's.
The group was large enough to employ two full time qualified company secretaries. Each dormant company's called up and fully paid share capital usually comprised two 25p (previously five shilling) shares.
I asked about the whereabouts of the 50p cash disclosed in each company's balance sheet. I was directed to a cupboard containing old tobacco tins (mostly Old Holborn) each neatly labelled with a subsidiary company's name. These were stacked on shelves in alphabetical order.
Each tin contained a 50p coin or the equivalent in smaller change.
I was also informed that until 1971 each tin contained a ten bob note or four half crowns, which had to be exchanged when decimal currency was introduced.
