Families & Wealth

Our Families & Wealth Practice

The partners at Chetcuti Cauchi understand that high-net-worth and ultra-HNW families and their family businesses face several challenges in an dynamic global environment, increased regulations, reporting requirements and competition. Founders, family members, and their family office personnel must navigate issues such as asset protection, growth and diversification, tax compliance and tax optimisation, travel and mobility, succession planning and business continuity, contingency planning, security and cybersecurity, and intelligent giving. Our firm is specially equipped to support families in addressing these challenges, whether through in-house or outsourced solutions.

Protection of Family Wealth

Family wealth, inherited, built or otherwise acquired, spanning one or several countries, requires careful organisation to ensure the preservation of value and its passing on to the next generations. Our private wealth lawyers have extensive experience planning and designing wealth structures, asset holding vehicles and asset protection strategies across the globe.

A trust can serve as a flexible and efficient solution for the protection and management of family assets. Chetcuti Cauchi's wholly-owned and licensed trust company authorised by the Malta Financial Services  Authority and stands as one of the foremost Maltese Trust Companies. Our Trust Law team of lawyers, accountants, financial advisors and trust administrators bring to the table a strategic mix of skills and experience necessary for the running of a high-calibre trust operation while maintaining the levels of personalised services our clients have become used to expect.

Family Trusts

As trustees, our priority is to ensure utmost care in the administration of the property put in trust for the ultimate benefit of the trust’s beneficiaries, typically, future generations. We also help set up family investment and co-investment platforms and help implement listing and exit strategies.

While carrying out the necessary due diligence procedures and maintaining legal compliance throughout the life of the trust, we respect the client’s wishes in settling the trust property. We have years of experience in drafting trust instruments that best reflect a client’s needs and endeavour to make all the implications of settling a property in trust transparent to our clients. This includes any tax or accounting requirements that may arise in which our qualified accountants and our tax advisors have long-standing experience with the tax aspects of Maltese trusts.

Family Trusts

At an international level, Malta provides a family-friendly environment for business governance and wealth management, complimented by a legal framework and a professional infrastructure for the management of trusts and companies. The Trusts and Trustees Act and Malta's law on foundations provide flexible tools for asset protection and the running of family businesses on an international scale. Moreover, Malta's favourable taxation system includes the absence of withholding taxes on dividends, royalties and interests, as well as tax exemptions for dividend income and capital gains arising on the transfer of participating holdings. A similar exemption also applies to stamp duty otherwise applicable on the acquisition of shares in Maltese companies. 

Malta Foundations Law

With the enactment of Act XIII of 2007 as the law which regulates foundations in Malta, supplemented by the Voluntary Organisations Act of 2007, Malta’s foundations law is an all-encompassing legislative framework which deals with various aspects relevant to foundations. At Chetcuti Cauchi we are fully geared towards helping clients in the setting up of Malta foundations set up by public deed or will and endowment.

Find out more about Maltese Foundations Law

Family Estate Management

Our Estate Management Practice offers all-encompassing services to clients requiring fiduciary services, trust set-up and management and asset preservation vehicles. We have a wealth of expertise in offering excellent tax-planning, corporate and fiduciary services, specialising in implementing and administering corporate, trust and fiduciary structures and providing additional advice on private residence and relocation solutions to Malta.

Family Philanthropy

We guide families in defining the ways they can make a difference to the world and help the less fortunate. Drafting philanthropy policies is critical in understanding the philanthropic goals of the family and evolve these as the next generation grows and the family evolves. We assist our clients in the day-to-day operation of philanthropic work including setting clear parameters for charitable giving, ensuring tax-efficient giving and tax deductibility where possible and documenting and reporting such activities. Chetcuti Cauchi’s Philanthropy practice provides assistance on the registration, compliance and accounting processes of operating charitable foundations and voluntary organizations for families who want to an appropriate vehicle for chartable giving, to organise philanthropic activities and possibly also to raise funding from friends and family.

Malta Family Offices

Within Malta’s path to becoming the leading international family office hub, Malta has been lining up all key points that family office promoters, principals and beneficiaries look for in a destination for their global or regional family office.  While transitioning from an offshore centre in the 1990s to a compliant, transparent and self-sustaining financial centre within the European Union, Malta’s legal and regulatory framework for family offices has been carefully crafted and evolved to tick all the boxes for family offices. Learn more about our Family Office Advisory practice.