Expertise

Carmen qualified into the Private Capital team in September 2019, and specialises in private client, trusts and charity law. Having trained with the firm, Carmen benefited from a broad training experience which included a six-month secondment to the in-house legal team of a large retail client. Carmen has a particular interest in the commercial use of trusts and is regularly involved in advising in relation to trust structures in corporate and commercial transactions. She also advises in relation to complex trust arrangements in the financial services and in other highly regulated sectors, including in relation to consumer protection trusts and employee benefit trusts.  

Her recent experience includes: 

• Advising in relation to the re-structure by way of transfer of engagements of a client's consumer protection trust based business in advance of the regulation of the client's sector of activity; 
• Assisting in the transfer of 4,500 trusteeships between an institutional trustee services provider and a newly established trust corporation; 
• Advising in relation to the creation of a bespoke consumer protection trust to facilitate a banking client's wind-down by providing functional trust protection for unclaimed consumer funds;  
• Advising executors, trustees and beneficiaries on the administration of trusts and estates, including those with complex, cross-jurisdictional elements, and/or complex assets bases;
• Advising on a range of charity law issues, including: 

establishing and incorporating new charities, trading subsidiaries, and other not-for-profit vehicles;

advising those engaging with a range of charitable and not-for profit entities, including registered and unregistered charities, Royal Charter charities, CIOs, charitable trusts and company, and other not-for-profit entities, such as community interest companies 

the use of fundraising and commercial participation agreements; 

advising on compliance with trustee duties and governance through litigious proceedings, the making of Serious Incident Reports to the Charity Commission and the seeking of Charity Commission advice and consent through charity proceedings;

advising banks and other corporate entities in their dealing with charities, including in relation to property transactions and lending to charities; and 

options available to trustees for dealing with permanently endowed funds.