Equity and the Law of Trusts

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According to this case, if all of the beneficiaries in a trust are of adult age and under no disability, These rights were an important source of income for the often, cash-short English monarchs. Henry VII and Henry VIII, who often faced increasingly expensive foreign wars, were determined to protect and increase their revenue from these rights as lord. Some scholars have called this phenomenon, "Fiscal Feudalism". [17] In 1529, Henry VIII proposed a bill that would restore feudal incidents where land had been conveyed to the use of executing the ladnowners will, but only at one third of the levels that the Common Law demanded. The House of Commons rejected the bill in 1531, at which point the King threatened that if they would not accept his proposal he would seek to enforce his feudal rights as far as the Law allowed. Within the circles of the King's legal advisers the view came to prevail that Uses of land were deceitful and thus were actually contrary to conscience to enforce. To this end, in 1532, Thomas Audley was made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal [note 4] and Lord Chancellor the following year. Furthermore, the King's Secretary, Thomas Cromwell, was appointed Master of the Rolls in 1534.

Particularly because of the effect of (5) above on the Crown, Henry VIII enacted the Statute of Uses 1536, attempting to remove these advantages of uses. An automatic resulting trust will arise where the settlor transfers property to the intended trustee

Method of assessment

Trust Remedies Including Tracing Knowing Receipt Trust Dutiies And Powers And Equitable Damages Notes Attempts to alter this maxim in recent times by Lord Denning in (Hussey v Palmer 1972) were unsuccessful. Courts will firstly apply common law and if this is not fair then an equitable remedy will be provided. This maxim sets out that equity is not in place to overrule judgements in common law but rather to make sure that parties don’t suffer an injustice. This applies whether you are a paralegal, a solicitor, a barrister or a legal clerk. Break it down for me a little bit! trust, and therefore he must exercise his discretion within the trust terms and distribute the trust

eg. Berry v Berry, 1929: husband and wife separated and husband agreed to pay annual maintenance, by deed. Later, both entered into simple variation by contract for reduced sum. Under Common Law, if you want to vary obligation obtained by deed, must be done by another deed. But the equitable rule is to "look to substance and not to form" hence any contract with valuable consideration will suffice to vary original agreement. Megaw LJ—a trust could be valid, even with uncertain beneficiaries, if there was a "core number" Equity stretches across all areas of law. It’s an incredibly important part of the legal system, but the majority of people working in this area of law will be dealing with the various intricacies of trust law. Burrows argues that as law develops, it is proper for judges to borrow ideas across the Common Law/equity divide, and may find good inspirations for development of law. (as opposed to NZ view of solving individual cases, this is about a wider view of general development)

Notes

which, in the case of a trust for persons, enable the beneficiary to hold the trustee to account for While the Statute of Uses ended the practice of creating uses as a means of creating valid wills of land, the Statute was not held to execute all Uses. This would serve as the birthplace of the trust. Some Uses had active duties the feoffees had to fulfill, such as managing an estate or collecting and distributing income, or paying debts. [26] These 'active' Uses could not be executed automatically by the Statute and were thus excluded. Amongst these, charitable uses were able to continue undisturbed, directly becoming what are now called charitable trusts when the nomenclature changed. Another category of Use that was excluded from the application of the Statute of 1536 was the "double Use" [27] or the 'Use upon a Use'. There were two main variations of this type of Use. Under the first, land owned by A would be conveyed to X 'to the use of X himself to the use of B.' Alternatively, A could convey to X 'to the use of Y to the use of B'. Under either of these arrangements the Statute would execute the initial Use (ie either X or Y would immediately stand seised to the use of B), but the second Use was not, allowing therefore for the creation of Uses of land so long as an intermediary was inserted before the intended beneficiary. [27] [28] The first reported case where this arrangement was enforced in Chancery was Bertie v Herenden. In that case the dowager Duchess of Suffolk had fled to Poland to avoid persecution as a protestant during the reign of Mary and had conveyed land to a lawyer 'to his use' but secretly on trust to be reconveyed to her. [27] The law of trusts was constructed as part of " Equity", a body of principles that arose in the Courts of Chancery, which sought to correct the strictness of the common law. The trust was an addition to the law of property, in the situation where one person held legal title to property, but the courts decided it was fair, just or "equitable" that this person be compelled to use it for the benefit of another. This recognised a split between legal and beneficial ownership: the legal owner was referred to as a "trustee" (because he was "entrusted" with property) and the beneficial owner was the "beneficiary". If there is an unreasonable delay in bringing proceedings the case may be disallowed in equity. Acquiescence is where one party breaches another’s rights and that party doesn’t take an action against them they may not be allowed to pursue this claim at a later stage. These may be used as defences in relation to equity cases. For a defence of laches courts must decide whether the plaintiff has delayed unreasonably in bringing forth their claim and the defence of acquiescence can be used if the actions of the defendant suggest that they are not going ahead with the claim so it is reasonable for the other party to assume that there is no claim. (Nelson v Rye 1996) Furthermore, the use as a method of evading the feudal law of succession to land threatened the revenue of the Crown. Lords, and particularly the Crown, had certain rights over their tenants' land, sometimes called 'incidents of tenure'. [16] Some of the most important were wardship and premier seisin. Under these doctrines, the Crown had the right to enjoy the profit of the tenant's land until he was of age (21) and to select a suitable marriage for the ward, something that could involve a profitable transaction for the Crown as it was allowed to sell the right to marry a rich heir. Likewise, under premier seisin, the Crown could claim the profits of an heir's land for a year. [16]

Chandler, Jr., Alfred D. (1977). The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp.319–320. ISBN 9780674940529. Recognise potential alternative solutions to particular problems and make a reasoned choice between them.

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Indeed, this practice of conveying to feoffees became so common that not only was it done shortly before death, but it could be done long before, during the life of the landowner, and the transfer simply to the use of the landowner. This still gave the landowner all the control he needed as the feoffees were obliged to execute his instruction, both while alive but also by his will, since this interest under a use came to be seen as devisable legal interest under a will. [15] This book is part of a series of 8 textbooks that have been specially designed to cover academic law for students converting to law. Published and updated regularly, these user-friendly study manuals are designed to help you successfully acquire knowledge and understanding of the foundational law of England & Wales.

The 15th century, not only saw the work of the Chancery come to be characterised by the Use, but it began to give the Use some of the hallmarks of an interest in property. Eg, while it was still purely based on the conscience of the feoffee, where all of the feoffees died, the heir of the last one to die remained bound. Likewise, rules like that of Equity's darling, began to emerge in the 1450s. Indeed, possibly as early as 1465, it is even possible to see something that strongly resembles the modern resulting trust. [13] Early modern embedding [ edit ] Henry VIII, fiscal feudalism and the Use [ edit ] Wills of Land [ edit ] on trust for the transferor/settlor. Therefore, the beneficial or equitable ownership is retained by This growing 'course' became increasingly inflexible. In 1617 the Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, appointed an official reporter for the first time. This reporter sat at his feet and took notes of his judgements, allowing them to be easily and comprehensively cited. By the second half of the century, cases in the Chancery were being cited in argument regularly. While this was not universally accepted, the use of precedent in the Chancery was increasingly accepted and expected. Chancellors also reacted to this development by giving more detailed reasons for their decisions more and more often. This allowed cases that were alike to be treated alike. This process culminated with Lord Nottingham's famous statement that he could not decide cases according to his own private conscience, but that "the conscience by which I must proceed is merely civilis et politica and tied to certain measures." [48] Thus, Equity "hardened into a kind of law" such that large areas of its jurisdiction, like the law relating to mortgages were clearly regulated by rules as certain as those provided by the Common Law. [49] Early reforms: Commonwealth and Restoration [ edit ] Corruption and inefficiency [ edit ] Conduct of the parties will also affect whether the judge will grant them an injunction (Chappell v Times Newspaper 1975) Interlocutory Injunction Where an express trust fails for uncertainty of objects, an automatic resulting trust arises in favour

Learning outcomes

Three stage test on granting interlocutory injunctions was introduced in the English case (American Cyanamid) this was accepted and followed as law in the Irish case (Campus Oil V The Minister for Energy) : trusts have no beneficiaries; rather, they are created for a particular purpose. Furthermore, unlike Baker has also identified the sheer volume of work that the Chancery was increasingly asked to undertake as a factor that contributed to this process of 'hardening'. As the Chancellors came to be "faced with thousands of petitions, they could not help but develop routine attitudes to commonly recurring cases." [47] Nonetheless, these 'routine attitude', built on an earlier tradition of a procedural 'course' that developed and that over the 16th century came to encompass doctrinal matters. [47]