El verdadero poder del fundador no está en controlar para siempre, sino en dejar una estructura que garantice continuidad sin él.
The trust: more than a legal figure, a strategy of transcendence.
Trying a synthetic work about the trust is complex. Its conceptual and functional wealth makes it a tool that is not exhausted in definitions. The trust is not just a contract; It is a structure that allows founders to order heritage, protect the family, guarantee obligations, attract investments and solve problems that the single will cannot.
Since its origin, he has gained the confidence of Mexican and foreign business, of natural and moral persons, and of whom they see in him an ally to fulfill purposes that go beyond the legal: the emotional, the strategic, the human.
Essential legal framework
The trust is regulated mainly by articles 381 to 394 of the General Law of Credit Titles and Operations (LGTOC). By virtue of this contract, the trust transmits the property or ownership of goods or rights to a fiduciary institution, to administer them according to lawful and determined purposes.
The key elements are:
• Trust: Whoever provides the goods.
• Fiduciary: Authorized institution that manages the trust.
• Trust: beneficiary that receives fruits or benefits.
The law requires that the contract be in writing, that the aims of trust are specified, and that the fiduciary accepts the order. In addition, it may include a technical committee, which acts as a strategic supervision and direction body.
Trust as an instrument of control and continuity
Business families face a recurring dilemma: how to ensure that what is built with so much effort is not diluted in disputes, improvisations or leadership gaps?
The trust responds with structure:
• Ensures transparency: avoid arbitrariness in the management of resources.
• Delimits the power of decision: establishes clear rules that allow professionalizing management.
• It generates legal certainty: the trustee acts under a framework of trust and precise limits, without appropriating what it manages.
More than property, the trust represents a fiduciary ownership, where goods are at the service of a purpose, not individual wills. It is the bridge between family tradition and business institutionalization.
An orderly succession tool
One of the great challenges in the family business is the generational relief. The trust facilitates this transit to:
• Define who and how they will participate in the benefits.
• Establish conditions for successors to receive not only heritage, but also responsibility.
• Avoid conflicts by converting implicit rules into express provisions.
Thus, it protects the founders of uncertainty, the heirs of unnecessary disputes and the internal fracture company that may compromise its permanence.
“Who leaves the succession randomly, risks the work of his whole life; who plans it with a trust, sows continuity.”
Phrases to reinforce vision
• “The trust does not divide, orders; it does not improvise, he says.”
• “The true power of a founder is not always controlling, but in leaving rules that survive its absence.”
• “A well -inherited heritage is the one that is accompanied by clear rules.”
In Latin America, more than 70% of family businesses do not survive the second generation. The reasons are not always financial. Many times they are emotional: lawsuits between brothers, doubts about who decides, mix of personal interests with strategic decisions.
The trust does not eliminate emotions, but creates a framework where they do not destroy the built work. It is a way of protecting the legacy without depending on goodwill, but clear rules and solid structures.
To release control, you have to create a mechanism that ensures it.
The trust allows the founder to retire without leaving, delegate without losing course, and sow continuity without imposing presence.
The trust is not a cold document or a simple legal procedure:
It is the translation of love into responsibility, of effort in continuity, of confidence in certainty.
In the family business, using this figure is not optional: it is the way for it to be sown with so much effort is not lost in disputes, but also flourish in union, justice and permanence.
Because in the end, more important than inheriting goods is to inherit order.
And more valuable than leaving a name on the titles, is to leave a future that walks with course.
About the author:
Twitter: @mariorizofiscal
The opinions expressed are only the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and the editorial line of Forbes Mexico.
Follow business information and today in Forbes Mexico
