Category Archives: Equity and Trusts
‘Call For Papers: Trusts & Estates Collaborative Research Network (CRN) of Law and Society Association’
Trusts & Estates Collaborative Research Network – Law and Society Association Annual Meeting – Chicago, Illinois May 22-25, 2025. Call for Participation – Deadline September 29, 2024. The Trusts & Estates Collaborative Research Network invites proposals for (i) individual papers to be organized into panels; (ii) fully-formed panel proposals; and (iii) proposals for other sessions […]
Lloyd Brown, ‘Trustee personal liability for contaminated land remediation: the UK position’
ABSTRACT Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 creates a liability risk for trusts and trustees. Trustees may indeed be found liable pursuant to Part IIA’s definition of an ‘owner’ of contaminated land. This definition includes trustees to avoid the situation of people evading liability by transferring affected land into trust funds. However, the […]
Joel Nitikman, ‘Grin and bare it: the recent kerfuffle over bare trusts’
ABSTRACT Recent changes to the Canadian Income Tax Act have resulted in the concept of bare trusts coming under discussion. In this article, Joel Nitikman, KC explores the history, definition and details of the concept of a bare trust and concludes that a trustee may have significant powers and even numerous inherent fiduciary duties and […]
Hui Jing, ‘The illegality defence in Singapore Trust Law: a refined Ochroid test’
ABSTRACT In the Singapore High Court decision of Lau Sheng Jan Alistair v Lau Cheok Joo Richard and Sng Gek Hong Cynthia, Goh Yihan JC, who delivered the judgment, addressed three issues: the rule in Saunders v Vautier, the sham trust, and the illegality defence. Goh Yihan JC’s examination of the rule in Saunders v […]
Katharine Jackson, ‘Public and Private Fiduciaries: Agents, Trustees, and the Politics of Acting for Others’
ABSTRACT Over the past decade, political and legal theorists began conscripting private fiduciary law to help delimit and define the duties of public officials. While enlisting additional legal prophylactics against arbitrary government may have appeared especially appealing during a Trump administration characterized by corruption and racism, this Article argues that straightforwardly applying fiduciary doctrine to […]
Goodtime Chimnecherem Okara, ‘Scotland in the Forefront of Property Law Reforms in the UK: Potential Implications for the Scottish People’
ABSTRACT The Scottish Government has taken steps to revolutionise its body of law on ‘trust and succession’ and housing. The recent Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024 has severally impacted the issues of appointment and removal of trustees, fiduciary duties of trustees, rights of beneficiaries, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investments in Scotland; while […]
‘When property held “in trust” is not a trust: the decision in Nazir v Begum [2024] EWHC 378′
At first blush the decision of Freedman J in Nazir v Begum [2024] EWHC 378 (KB) appears counterintuitive. Section 33(1) of the Administration of Estates Act 1925 (‘AEA’) states that: ‘On the death of a person intestate as to any real or personal estate, that estate shall be held in trust by his personal representatives […]
Choi Young Jae, ‘Falsifying falsification’
ABSTRACT Almost a decade after the UKSC’s decision of AIB v Redler, there remains significant academic criticism and judicial scepticism towards the employment of causal inquiries in equity’s remedial response to trustees’ misapplications of trust property. This article seeks to defend AIB, and the causal principles enunciated therein, from those criticisms. It does so by […]
Riz Mokal, ‘The Mysterious Pari Passu Principle’
ABSTRACT We know that Lord Justice Snowden’s landmark judgment for a unanimous Court of Appeal of England and Wales in Adler (2024) emphasised the presumptive importance of the pari passu principle. But what does this principle amount to? What does it require? The term ‘pari passu’ is used in judicial and textbook writings to refer […]
Lauren Roth, ‘The Fiduciary Game’
ABSTRACT Fiduciary duties are supposed to bridge the gap between public and private law. Private actors who engage in ‘public or quasi-public’ functions (eg, corporate directors and pension administrators) are often subject to fiduciary constraints to protect vulnerable parties who lack power in relationships with these actors. Recently, scholars have argued that both courts and […]