When a client wants to put property into a trust, your first job is to check it will actually hold up. A trust that fails leaves the property going somewhere nobody intended — back to the settlor, into a residuary estate, or to the Crown. Knowing the rules that make a trust valid lets you draft confidently, spot defects in a will or settlement, and tell a client straight away whether their wishes can be carried out.
This lesson builds from the core principle that every private trust needs someone who can enforce it, then works outward to the harder cases.
What this lesson covers:
- The Beneficiary Principle and the Three Certainties — why a trust needs enforceable beneficiaries, and the three certainties (intention, subject matter, objects) every express trust must satisfy.
- Certainty of Objects and Consequences of Failure — the different tests for fixed and discretionary trusts, the uncertainties that defeat them, and where the property goes when a trust fails.
- Purpose Trusts and Charitable Trusts — why most purpose trusts are void, the narrow exceptions that survive, and the three requirements for charitable status.
- Gifts to Unincorporated Associations — how a gift to a body with no legal personality can still work, and how surplus funds are distributed on dissolution.