TENS of thousands of people are being urged to review their wills now the government has published final details of Gordon Brown’s trusts crackdown.

Lawyers had been advising families to hold fire until the new rules became law as part of the finance act, which was published just over a week ago.

The clampdown, first announced in the March budget, hits two types of trust that are often written into wills to provide for family members — accumulation and maintenance and interest in possession.

Families may now need to rewrite their wills or they could be stung with inheritance-tax charges on their assets.

Stuart Skeffington of Withers, a law firm, said: “The landscape for providing for children and grandchildren is now very different. Individuals would be well advised to review their arrangements.”

The chancellor’s tax grab could also catch some life- insurance policies written into trust, although policyholders would have to be very unlucky to face tax charges.

We answer your questions on trusts and highlight some alternatives.

How are the trusts affected?

Accumulation and maintenance (A&M) trusts were commonly used by parents or grandparents who wanted to give money to children, often to pay school fees.

The benefit of using a trust, rather than making an outright gift, was that the trustees — usually a relative and a solicitor — could retain control of the trust’s income until the beneficiary’s 25th birthday and the capital for up to 80 years from the creation of the trust.

Before the budget, gifts into A&M trusts made during someone’s lifetime were treated as potentially exempt transfers — in other words, the gift would be exempt from inheritance tax (IHT) if the donor lived for another seven years.

Now, however, you must pay IHT at 20% on the value of the gift above the IHT threshold — £285,000 this year. The trust’s assets are also subject to a 6% tax charge every 10 years.

Brown’s crackdown also hit interest-in-possession trusts, which usually have one beneficiary entitled to income and another to capital. They were widely used by people who wanted to provide for their spouse, but make sure their capital passed to their children if their spouse remarried.