Estate Planning

The Genesis of Trusts (?)

By Hull & Hull LLP

The contemporary attitude is that we live in a young country.  True in some respects.  Yet we own the oldest contiguous institutions.  Trusts are one aspect of this venerable inheritance: the trust is as old as the Common Law.  Actually, a little older in some respects: the English trust finds its roots in the 12th century.  

It all started when a few knights returned from their crusades to find that the "friends" to whom they had entrusted management of their feudal lands refused to return said lands.  There was no mechanism at law to force the new untrustworthy owners to return the land so the law courts could do nothing. 

Naturally, the irate knights went to the Lord Chancellor and "asked" for justice.  One can imagine the scene: the silk-gowned Lord Chancellor looking down at the length of his shoe, then up at a selection of battle-worn armored thugs with gauntlets tapping hilts on chipped swords, over at the foppish, yawning new land-holder, then down again at the length of his shoe.  Unsurprisingly, the knights who had nothing else to live for continually won in the Courts of the Chancellory and the concept of trustees and beneficiaries was born.  I wager that trial by ordeal would have reached similar results so this must have been fate at work.

Tomorrow some interesting case law, I promise. 

Chris Graham

Full post as published by Toronto Estate Law Blog on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).