Trust (law)

A trust is a legal relationship in which the owner of property, or any transferable right, gives it to another to manage and use solely for the benefit of a designated person. In the English common law, the party who entrusts the property is known as the "settlor," the party to whom it is entrusted is known as the "trustee," the party for whose benefit the property is entrusted is known as the "beneficiary," and the entrusted property is known as the "corpus" or "trust property." A testamentary trust is an irrevocable trust established and funded pursuant to the terms of a deceased person's will. An inter vivos trust is a trust created during the settlor's life.

The trustee is the legal owner of the assets held in trust on behalf of the trust and its beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are equitable owners of the trust property. Trustees have a fiduciary duty to manage the trust for the benefit of the equitable owners. Trustees must provide regular accountings of trust income and expenditures. A court of competent jurisdiction can remove a trustee who breaches their duty. Some breaches can be charged and tried as criminal offenses. A trustee can be a natural person, business entity or public body. A trust in the US may be subject to federal and state taxation. The trust is governed by the terms under which it was created. In most jurisdictions, this requires a contractual trust agreement or deed. It is possible for a single individual to assume the role of more than one of these parties, and for multiple individuals to share a single role. For example, in a living trust it is common for the grantor to be both a trustee and a lifetime beneficiary while naming other contingent beneficiaries.

Trusts have existed since Roman times and become one of the most important innovations in property law. Specific aspects of trust law vary in different jurisdictions. Some U.S. states are adapting the Uniform Trust Code to codify and harmonize their trust laws, but state-specific variations still remain.

An owner placing property into trust turns over part of their bundle of rights to the trustee, separating the property's legal ownership and control from its equitable ownership and benefits. This may be done for tax reasons or to control the property and its benefits if the settlor is absent, incapacitated, or deceased. Testamentary trusts may be created in wills, defining how money and property will be handled for children or other beneficiaries. While the trustee is given legal title to the trust property, in accepting title the trustee owes a number of fiduciary duties to the beneficiaries. The primary duties owed are those of loyalty, prudence and impartiality. Trustees may be held to a high standard of care in their dealings to enforce their behavior. To ensure beneficiaries receive their due, trustees are subject to ancillary duties in support of the primary duties, including openness, transparency, recordkeeping, accounting, and disclosure. A trustee has a duty to know, understand, and abide by the terms of the trust and relevant law. The trustee may be compensated and have expenses reimbursed, but otherwise turn over all profits from the trust and neither endebt nor riskily speculate on the assets without the written, clear permission of all adult beneficiaries.

There are strong restrictions regarding a trustee with a conflict of interest. Courts can reverse a trustee's actions, order profits returned, and impose other sanctions if they find a trustee has failed in their duties. Such a failure is a civil breach of trust and can leave a neglectful or dishonest trustee with severe liabilities. It is advisable for settlors and trustees to seek legal advice before entering into, or creating, a trust agreement and trustees must take care in acting or omitting to act to avoid unlawful mistakes.

Roman law had a well-developed concept of the trust (fideicommissum) in terms of "testamentary trusts" created by wills but never developed the concept of the inter vivos (living) trusts which apply while the creator lives. This was created by later common law jurisdictions. Personal trust law developed in England during the 12th and 13th centuries. In medieval English trust law, the settlor was known as the feoffor to uses, while the trustee was known as the feoffee to uses, and the beneficiary was known as the cestui que use, or cestui que trust.

Legal historians believe that inter vivos trusts were first developed for the benefit of Franciscan friars, who were forbidden to own any sort of property. Benefactors would convey land for the use of the friars to a suitable local person (the feoffee) to hold legal fee simple title, while promising to allow the friars to live on and receive the profits of the land. However the feoffee had no legal obligations to the beneficiary in English common law, so after the death of the feoffor, there was no one to enforce the promises made by the feoffee or his ancestor. However, disgruntled beneficiaries could petition the King's Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor could decide a case as "keeper of the king's conscience" (also known as the principle of equity in English law). After the chancellor began to consistently enforce the promises of feoffees, uses developed into a popular means for circumventing primogeniture and feudal death taxes.

As the proliferation of uses impacted tax revenue and complicated land sales, King Henry VIII pressured parliament to pass the Statute of Uses in 1535, which purported to abolish uses by "executing" them. This transferred title from the feoffee to the beneficiary. However, lawyers and judges soon found holes in the statute and courts held that the statute did not apply if the feoffee had active duties to perform. The courts began to refer to these title holders with active duties to manage the property as "trustees" of a "trust" in place of the medieval terminology.