A trust is only worth anything once it actually exists. A settlor can have the clearest intentions in the world, but until the trust is constituted, the intended beneficiary has nothing they can enforce. As a solicitor advising on gifts, family arrangements or estate planning, your job is often to tell a client whether a trust is binding — and, if a transfer has gone wrong, whether anything can be done to save it.
This lesson takes you from intention to enforceable arrangement, one piece at a time.
- Constitution: The Basics — what it means to constitute a trust, the two elements required, and the three routes to get there.
- Valid Declaration of Trust — the three certainties and the formalities needed to declare a trust, including over land.
- Routes to Constitution: Self-Declaration and Testamentary Trusts — when each is constituted and what makes it effective.
- Route B: Transfer to a Third-Party Trustee — how legal title passes for land, shares, cash and chattels.
- Equity Will Not Assist a Volunteer — the general rule and why failed gifts aren't rewritten as trusts.
- Exceptions: Completing an Incomplete Transfer — the limited ways equity perfects an imperfect transfer.
- Effect of a Constituted Trust — the consequences once a trust is binding, and a clear step-by-step method for analysing any scenario.