A purpose trust normally fails for want of a beneficiary to enforce it — charity is the great exception, and everything in this chapter flows from that. It opens with what makes a charitable trust distinctive, who enforces it, and the three requirements for validity, before working through the recognised charitable purposes and the public benefit test, including the personal nexus problem and the relaxed rule for poverty trusts. It then examines why a trust must be wholly and exclusively charitable, why political purposes disqualify, and how the cy-près doctrine rescues gifts when the intended charity fails. The chapter closes with the anomalous non-charitable purpose trusts that survive despite the beneficiary principle, and the different perpetuity rules that apply to each.
