Technical article

Is the Cook Islands the Strongest? What Changed When We Filled the Gaps

In our table before the gaps were filled, the Cook Islands came first overall at 4.40, with 40 places ranked.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Imagine a reader who has seen the same line on several websites: the Cook Islands is the strongest place for a trust. The reader wonders whether the claim holds, or whether it only repeats.

Both parts have an answer. The law is real. The ranking is less settled.

Who says it

Alper Law ranks the Cook Islands first at 4.75 out of 5, ahead of Nevis at 3.85 (2026). Blake Harris Law, Global Wealth Protection, private.law and others agree. Every one of them sells these trusts, so their lists are one provider's view. No neutral body ranks trust law by strength.

What the law says

The International Trusts Amendment Act 1989 is hosted on a Pacific legal site. Its amendments limit the time a creditor has to sue to two years (1991) and put the burden of proving intent to defraud on the creditor (1989). Law firms say the standard is beyond reasonable doubt; the statute wording on the standard is not among the sources here. It bars proceedings that would enforce certain foreign judgments. It says a trust is not invalid merely because it defeats heirship claims. The features the sellers quote are in the text.

Alper's own comparison page calls many features the same in the Cook Islands and Nevis, and Southpac calls the benefits "substantially similar". A statute does not stop a US court acting on the person, either. In a 1999 case brought by the Federal Trade Commission against Affordable Media (9th Circuit), settlors who kept power to appoint trustees were held in contempt.

What our table did

We score each place on 17 facts, in four lenses. In our table before the gaps were filled, the Cook Islands came first overall at 4.40, with 40 places ranked. One cell was blank, the one for political and economic stability. A blank cell is left out of an average, so the score rested on the facts we had.

Then the cell was filled. S&P Global Ratings gave the Cook Islands BB- on 31 March 2026, raised from B+. We map a BB rating to 2 out of 5. A credit rating is a stand-in we chose for stability, and the Cook Islands has no entry in the rule-of-law index we use. That one cell sits in all four lenses.

Nevis is now first for protection, with Malaysia second. The Cook Islands is third. Its overall score fell from 4.40 to 4.09, level with Nevada, which is seventh.

How firm is sixth?

Not very. When we repeat the ranking 1,000 times with random weights, the Cook Islands' overall place runs from third to 29th in most trials, with 13th as the middle value. Cayman, the Isle of Man and Nevis hold the top three places in the base table. The stability score rests on a credit rating, and a different reading could move it.

Who this touches

Your heirs and your partner feel the stability question most, since a trust is meant to outlast the people who set it up. The place you pick may be one you never visit. Its courts and its credit rating then matter for your children.

The objection

You might say the statute is what counts, not a bond rating. That is fair, and the table already gives the statute weight. The rating enters through stability, which carries 10% to 15% of each lens. It was enough to move the place when the blank was filled.

A few doors

You could read the 1989 Act alongside the Nevis ordinance. You could ask a seller what the other place offers, since their own pages call the two similar.

Which fact would you want filled in before trusting any ranking? Share it here, and someone may benefit from your story.

Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data. Date read: October 2026.