Maurice Turnor Gardner incorporates a trust corporation, and the 1925 Acts explain why

On 14 September 2026, WealthBriefing reported that Maurice Turnor Gardner, the London private client law firm, has established MTG Trust Company. It is a trust corporation offering four professional appointments: attorney, executor, trustee and independent administrator. The firm made the announcement late the previous week.

MTG says the company will act where a professional appointee is needed, working alongside the lawyers, accountants, private banks, family offices and trust companies a family already uses. The situations it lists are high-value multi-jurisdictional estates, trusts holding business or international assets, replacement trustee appointments, and contentious estate administrations. Its stated reason for the launch is that estates, trusts and family wealth structures have become more complex, which puts a premium on professional appointees.

Those facts come from MTG’s own announcement, reported by WealthBriefing. The firm has released no figures, has not said how many appointments it expects to take, and has not named the individuals who will sit behind the company. MTG itself has been a private client specialist since 1 May 2009, when it was formed by the demerger of Allen & Overy’s private client department, according to its Legal 500 profile.

The corporate wrapper is not decoration

A partner at a law firm can be named as executor or trustee personally, and plenty are. Doing it through an incorporated trust corporation changes two things that matter to families holding UK assets.

The first is statutory. Section 14 of the Trustee Act 1925 provides that a sole trustee cannot give a valid receipt for the proceeds of sale or other capital money arising under a trust of land, unless that trustee is a trust corporation. Section 27(2) of the Law of Property Act 1925 has the same effect. In practice this means a family that wants one professional appointee rather than two, in a structure that holds English land, needs that appointee to hold trust corporation status. Without it, a second trustee has to be appointed before the property can be sold.

The second is continuity. An individual appointee retires, changes firm, loses capacity or dies, and the appointment then has to be transferred, usually at the least convenient moment. A company carries on. That is the point of the “independence and continuity” language in the launch, and it is also why several UK private client firms already run a trust corporation alongside the partnership.

What it means for families and their advisers

Very little changes for a family that already uses an offshore trustee for its main structures. What changes is the supply of English professional appointees willing to take a difficult appointment. Contentious estate administration is the interesting item on MTG’s list: it points at the case where beneficiaries cannot agree and a neutral party has to hold the ring. Firms have historically been cautious about taking those roles personally, for obvious liability reasons.

For families reviewing their own documents, the useful question is narrow. Is the executor or trustee named in the will or trust deed an individual or a corporation, and what has been written into the instrument about what happens when that individual stops being available? A great many older English wills name a partner at a firm that has since merged twice. Answering that costs a morning and avoids a probate delay later.

The second question is about conflicts. A firm that advises the family and also supplies the trustee holds both sides of a relationship that occasionally needs an argument. That is workable, and the market has long accepted it, but it should be a decision rather than a default.

Sources: WealthBriefing; Maurice Turnor Gardner; Legal 500; Trustee Act 1925.