Private wealth

Mauritian law offers two principal instruments: the trust, governed by the Trusts Act 2001, and the foundation, governed by the Foundations Act 2012. Their value does not lie in some advantage they confer by their mere existence. It lies in what they allow a family to organise: who holds, who decides, who receives, and how one generation gives way to the next.

The difficulty peculiar to Mauritius comes from the mixed character of the law. Succession remains governed by the Mauritian Civil Code and by forced heirship, the réserve héréditaire, while the trust is an English import. The joint between a civilian reserved share and a discretionary trust is the fault line of this area. It is dealt with when the structure is created, through a serious examination of domicile, residence, the situs of the assets and the succession law that will actually apply. It cannot be dealt with on the day the succession opens, when nothing is left but a lawsuit.

Family governance sits on top of that, and its instruments do not all have the same force. A holding company and a shareholders agreement bind. A family charter binds in conscience only. A succession protocol organises. Blurring those registers manufactures disappointment first and litigation afterwards, between people who each believed they had signed the same thing.

International families add their own questions: several tax residences, property abroad and subject to its local law, matrimonial property regimes, marriage contracts, reporting obligations and automatic exchange of information. A structure that is elegant on paper but silent on those points is not a structure. It is a deferred problem.

This work requires discretion and a long horizon. The practice works on the intention before the documents: who is to decide, who is to receive, on what timetable, on what conditions, and what is to happen if a generation is not ready or if a branch of the family separates. The instruments come afterwards, and they come easily once those answers exist.