Secret Trusts

to be valid. On the contrary, there are several cases from the New England colonies that make

The national trust was founded in 1895. It protects over 350 historic houses, gardens and ancient monuments. This organisation is a charity which does not rely funds from government but depends on membership fees and donations from members.

Mary McDonald, an 86-year-old woman, was frequently complaining about the high cost of maintenance of her house and high property taxes. She decided to cancel her fire insurance to reduce expenses. Mary’s daughter was aware of her mother’s concern about the property, and she took Mary to the lawyer’s office to sign some papers that would protect her mother. When Mary came to the lawyer’s office, she was advised that the paper she was going to sign was the deed to the property. Mary signed a document. Later on, when the municipal tax bill arrived, Mary McDonald was really surprised to see that the property was in her daughter’s name.

The difference between common intention constructive trusts and proprietary estoppel has been described as ‘illusory’ (Hayton). Do you agree with this statement? Consider how the case law has developed and give reasons for your answer.

The decision of the tribunal was that the appellant was found guilty of having acted with dishonesty when he relied on the documents, but not when he created them, here he was charged with lack of integrity. The court had to therefore consider what the definition of the words ‘dishonesty’ and ‘integrity’ was.

It is argued, that the imposition of this rigid structure would only undermine the settlor’s wishes and result in the courts finding the trust to be administratively unworkable. It has been stated in Re Manisty’s Settlement “that a power cannot be uncertain merely because it is wide in

For these reasons, the government argued that Petitioner’s reliance on the law-of-the-case doctrine was misplaced. The government emphasized that Petitioner’s

He pointed out that a trust should not be dependent on this distinction and that a trustee should look for beneficiaries in order to fulfill their fiduciary duty under the trust. In his opinion, Lord Wilberforce, noted that a discretionary trust is a trust and the trustee must identify beneficiaries. He continued that where a trust was made for the benefit of a group, the complete list test will not be appropriate in establishing certainty of objects. The list of beneficiaries in a discretionary trust cannot be completed and the trustee is, therefore, not required to provide equal benefits for all beneficiaries. In his view, the most appropriate test would be to inquire whether an individual is or is not a member of a beneficial

This case established that an auditor could be sued by a primary beneficiary for damages from negligence. A primary beneficiary is a party that has a direct benefit from the audit. Non-privity parties could also sue for gross negligence. This increased the auditor’s legal exposure to third parties. The SEC of 1934 reflected these changes and many others; one significant change was that auditor’s had a much higher litigation risk due to their new responsibility to third parties.

In Taylor v. Republic National Bank of Dallas, the court found a document referenced to be incorporated into the will invalid because it required the animated participation of an individual who had died. In the aforementioned case, the will failed to accurately describe the contents of the document as the individual was also the testator of the will. Also, a will that does not describe the contents of a document will not be found by the courts to have incorporated the document by its reference alone. Brooker v.

This essay will discuss the Supreme Court decision in FHR European Ventures LLP and others v Cedar Capital Partners LLC (Cedar) . The issue in this case was whether a bribe or secret commission accepted by an agent is held on constructive trust for his principal. This topic is a “relentless and seemingly endless debate” , as Sir Terence Etherton described, and that the “remedy awarded has vacillated for the last 200-odd years” . The major reason for the debate is because the principal will have propriety claim as opposed to a mere equitable compensation, if the bribe or commission is held on a constructive trust . The principal will be in a much more advantageous position if he was held to have propriety

6 which renders it likely that he is an untrustworthy personǯ.40 Gambling for the purpose of this definition could be satisfied. Since Louis has no precise details of how the money is invested, the probability of the evidence being destroyed at the inter partes stage, is at a more significant risk. As Simonǯs conduct is arguably not of a criminal nature, the privilege against self-incrimination is not likely to apply to the defendant. However if it falls with the definition of the authority Rank Film Distributors Ltd v Video Information Centre, then it may be hard to obtain disclosure of information in the proceedings against a conspiracy to defraud.41 Also due to the potential infringement on civil rights, the courts are quite reluctant

The contention arose with Hunter v Moss which did not follow the orthodox approach where Hunter was entitled 50 out of moss’s 1000 shares. Under the Goldcorp rule there would be no trust because the property was not separated however Dillon J said there was a valid trust. The rationale for this controversial decision was that it would have made no difference which 50 shares would have been given because they were all identical. So here there was no need to segregate the property if it was intangible.

The famous US decision of Riggs v Palmer serves to illustrate a considerable strength in Dworkin’s argument concerning rules and principles. The New York court had to decide a case to determine whether a grandson who poisoned his grandfather to obtain his inheritance was in fact able to collect such an inheritance. At the time, there existed no statute or law that invalidated his claim as a beneficiary due to his involvement in the murder. Furthermore, the applicable legal rule seemed to be that legacies contained in legally valid testamentary dispositions are to be guaranteed by law in accordance with the wishes of the testator. According to Hart, the court should, in this situation, be decided upon pre-existing law. Yet despite this, the court majority found that the grandson could not inherit, instead appealing to moral reasoning by citing the principle that no one should be able to profit from ones crimes. A similar decision based on principle was handed down 70 years later in the case of Henningsen v Bloomfield Motors Inc. As a result of these cases, Dworkin is able

In the first ethical problem selected, two separate books were kept by personnel in the Adelphia financial management department with the intent of deceiving external auditors; thus leading shareholders and the public to believe that the company was ultimately worth more than it was in actuality. In the second, the Rigas family frivolously dwindled away public money for personal selfish consumption which is clearly a violation of the public’s trust. In the weeks following the unraveling of events and divulgence of information, a number of townspeople and investors were concerned that the family was rather free with shareholder money and further believed corporate money was used to finance public generosity as previously discussed in this paper (Barlaup, Hanne, & Stuart, 2009, p. 10).