Clients often want to leave money for a thing rather than a person — to look after a pet, tend a grave, fund a cause, or further a belief. As a solicitor drafting wills and trusts, you need to know when such a gift will actually work and when it will quietly collapse. The starting point is uncomfortable: trusts for a purpose, with no human beneficiary to enforce them, are void by default. Your job is to recognise the narrow situations in which they survive — and to draft so they do.
What this lesson covers:
- Validity and the Beneficiary Principle — why these trusts are void by default, and the two routes by which a few survive.
- Trusts of Imperfect Obligation — the closed list of anomalous purposes a willing trustee may carry out.
- The Rule Against Inalienability — the perpetuity time limit that purpose trusts must respect.
- Enforcement — how a Pettingall order works and who keeps a willing trustee honest.
- Purpose Trusts Construed as Benefiting Individuals — when a court looks past the wording to find real beneficiaries.
- Surplus Funds and Resulting Trusts — where leftover money goes when the purpose is exhausted.
- Political Purposes and Exclusivity — why political aims fail, and when an ancillary element is tolerated.