Talk:Trust (law)

I think my decision to move this page deserves some justification.

This article may be - indeed appears to be - good in terms of content: but if it is, it is good only with regard to the USA's legal systems. Much of the content is wrong in the context of trust law more directly based on the "English model", as it applies in England and Wales, the Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Bermuda, Canada, (some of) the Caribbean, (some of) the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand - as well as several civil law nations with statutory trusts laws.

This difficulty asserts itself from the very first sentence, where trusts are conceived as a branch of contract law.

I felt that any attempt to reconcile the two legal systems in one article was doomed to failure, and would only lead to understandable disputes with the existing authors. My solution is to move the existing Trusts (property) to Trust (Law) USA and to create the new page Trust (Law) non-USA (a title which might itself promote some debate, there) to deal with trusts in the English-model jurisdictions.

I will make the obvious amendments on Trust (disambiguation), and in the first sentence of this article. I do not intend to make any further amendment on this page. AndyJones 19:27, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Complete re-write necessary

This article needs a complete rewrite. Recently, an anon added a lot of information to the introduction of the article which needs to be incorporated into the remaining context of the article itself. The information does not seem to be copyvio, but should be checked nonetheless. I lack the knowledge on this subject to combine these sections effectively, but if someone else who has a bit more of an idea about this could, then that would be much appreciated. --tomf688^{talk} 23:21, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

it could certainly use better section/sub-section organization

Revocable testamentary trust

Would someone mind providing a cite or discussion re the possibility of creating a revocable testamentary trust? I am skeptical that this is possible but am willing to be educated.

gbroiles 09:05, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Trust law and "contractual"

I have edited out the word "contractual" at the beginning of the article. I would argue that trust law is more fundamentally a species of property law, not contract law. That is, the beneficiary's relationship to the trustee is one of privity of estate, not privity of contract. There is arguably a contractual relationship between the trustor and the trustee, of course, so maybe I'm all wet -- and it's been a long time since I read the leading cases on trust law. I realize I'm splitting hairs here. Anybody have any thoughts? Famspear 22:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's your answer: the testor/settlor simply writes a clause into testamentary trust allowing one or more persons the right to withdraw all the assets at any time. I've seen in done in Indiana more than once. One should be careful to not assume a testamentary trust is ipso facto irrevocable. Unfortunately, this assumption is made by most practitioners without checking the document. I hope this is helpful....

Modifications to article on 23 January 2006

Dear fellow editors: I made lots of organizational (and a few substantive) changes to the main article on 23 January 2006. However, the article still needs work. Hhheelllppppp! Just kidding -- actually I would argue that those who have already contributed the substance of this article have done a very good job! Maybe it mostly needs some more fine tuning? Famspear 00:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

For one, it needs a new name that's actually consistent with other Wikipedia articles as well as the Manual of Style. I would use Trust (American law) or Trust (United States). But trust law is a low priority for me (I don't practice it and I didn't find it very interesting when I studied it in law school) so I'll leave it to you to fix the title if you wish. --Coolcaesar 08:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)