Once the vesting date arrives, the trust generally cannot continue operating as a discretionary trust in its ongoing form. The trust property must be distributed in accordance with the deed's vesting provisions — often to the beneficiaries named or described as default beneficiaries at that specific point, rather than distributed at the trustee's ongoing discretion as it would have been beforehand.

This has significant practical consequences:

• Loss of the trustee's discretionary distribution power, since post-vesting, income and capital are generally required to be dealt with as fixed entitlements under the vesting provisions, not discretionary decisions made each year.
• A potential CGT event, since the change from a discretionary interest to a fixed, vested entitlement can, in some circumstances, trigger capital gains tax consequences on the underlying trust assets.
• Unintended beneficiaries receiving entitlements, if the deed's default vesting provisions don't reflect who the family or business intends to benefit today, particularly if the deed hasn't been reviewed since it was drafted decades earlier.
• Stamp duty implications, depending on the state and the nature of the assets involved, since a change in beneficial ownership arising from vesting can potentially trigger duty in some circumstances.