Discussion Groups / English Usage / December 2009

According to:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Trustee+stock?r=66

   Trustee stock\ (Finance) High-grade stock in which trust funds may
   be legally invested. [Colloq.]

This gives the same definition taken from _Webster 1913 Suppl._
http://www.freedictionary.org/?Query=trustee%20stock

Possibly. I am definitely not an expert in this field. I understand that
it is possible to "assign" a life insurance policy to someone else. The
assignee becomes the beneficiary and "owner" of the policy. A crucial
point is that only the owner can cancel the policy. So if A takes out
life insurance on A's own life and then assigns the policy to B that is
an irrevocable transfer of ownership from A to B. However, A is still
responsible for paying the premiums.

Such a life insurance policy is of value even while the insured person
is still alive. It can be used as collateral for a loan.

My knowledge, such as it is, is based more on fiction than actual laws
or research.

My understanding is that in wealthy families, the wife's family would be
expected to provide a dowry, which might well be tied up legally so that
only she, or possibly her children, would ever have access to it. A
trustee would manage the investments, not her husband. Also, the husband
would be expected to 'settle' money on his wife, which would be used to
provide for her and any children if she were widowed. Again, this money,
since it's intended for the wife's use, might be put into a trust so the
husband couldn't spend it. In this case, it sounds like Rex wanted to
control all of his new family's financial resources and refused to
settle actual money or investments on his wife, offering an insurance
policy instead. And he complained because his wife's family's lawyers
wouldn't give him control of the money his wife's family were offering
for her future financial security.

Laws giving married women in the UK the right to control their own money
date to the previous century, IIRC, but where a lot of money was
involved, there were lengthy negotiations about the source and control
of money intended for the lifetime care of the would-be bride, with
would-be husbands wanting to control it all as heads of the family and
the bride's relatives (especially if they distrusted the prospective
groom) wanting to ensure that her financial future was secure.

I wouldn't be suprised if the same thing happens in marriages of wealthy
people today, but I don't know first-hand. Most people I know who get
married do so with only their own financial resources, and no vast
chunks of family money that has to be protected by trustees.

The conflict is because Rex is a businessman and wants to have all his
available capital (and he hoped, Julia's) used in his business. But the
custom in the upper classes was for the wife to have a sum settled in
trusts by both her father and her prospective husband for her benefit
and that of her children. These trust funds had to be invested in only
the safest, and hence low-yielding investments. Rex thought he could get
a better return on capital in his own business than the 2 or 3% interest
those investments would return.

Apteryx