Trust (law)

“ Now forestalling, regrating, and engrossing are the early English phrases for most of the unlawful or unmoral actions which we ascribe to the modern trust. In fact, there is hardly one legal injury which a trust is said to commit in these days which cannot be ranked under those three heads, or that of monopoly or that of restraint of trade. ”

“ For the Public Trustee, see below.
Creation and Extinction of the Trust.—A trust may be created either by act of a party or by operation of law. Where a trust is created by act of a party, the creation at common law need not be in writing. The Statute of Frauds altered the common law by enacting that all declarations or creations of trusts or confidences of any lands, tenements or hereditaments shall be manifested and proved by some writing, signed by the party who is by law enabled to declare such trust, or by his last will in writing, or else they shall be utterly void and of none effect. ”

“ But on what ground will you support the principles of civil law, if you act always in your own interest and not in that of your fellow citizens? What, too, is to become of the legal formula in cases of trust, "as should be done among honest men"? For who can be called honest who does nothing except on his own behalf? What principle will you lay down "in dividing a common property," when nothing can be "common" among men who measure all things by their own pleasure? ”

“ Must a fiduciary duty arise from positive state or federal law, or can it arise from general trust law, “a corpus juris festooned with various duties”? Id., at 417–418. All these questions, the dissenters observed, had long divided lower courts and remained unanswered. ”

“ In his view, faith is not mystic, supernatural, an exceptional development; it is the common basis of our dealings with each other. Credit, trust, confidence—the framework of society rests upon these. “I cannot trust you”—what worse thing can we say to one another? The law recognises every man’s right to the confidence of his fellow-men, and will have a man accounted innocent until he is proved guilty. ”

“ That a trustee, by whose negligence of a plain duty the property in his hands is wasted or injured, is chargeable with the loss, is a doctrine which pervades the whole law of trusts. And it is the only doctrine which will insure fidelity in trustees and protection to the interests of cestuis que trust. ”

“ We must profess that peoples and governments are accountable to God for the just administration of the trust committed to them, and responsible to a higher law than mere human laws, the eternal law itself, which is written on the conscience and clearly promulgated by [pg 733] a divine revelation. We must profess the sanctity of life, of marriage, of the rights of property, of oaths, contracts, treaties, and civic obligations, and the duty of allegiance and obedience to the laws and the lawful authorities in the state. ”

“ Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees. ”

“ Lord, with whom was Wood, for the respondents.-The only equitable relief sought by the bill, is discovery in aid of an action at law, partition of land held in common, and a declaration of an implied trust. To all these, the statute of limitations, and lapse of time, are a bar at law and in equity: no express trust for the complainants can be pretended; and a trust for others does not prevent the possession of the trustees from being adverse. ”

“ Expressing our unshakable belief in the dignity of the individual;
Placing our trust in societies that guarantee their members full protection of the law, due process and equal protection under the law ”

“ By passive trusts we mean those which are express, or created by the words of some deed or other instrument of writing, and not those arising or resulting by implication of law. Every express passive trust is abolished, and the deed or instrument by which it is created, or attempted to be, takes effect as a conveyance directly to the cestui que trust in whom the legal title vests, and the trustee acquires no estate or interest whatever. ”

“ As we understand its law, the trustee is an indispensable party over whom the court must acquire jurisdiction before it is empowered to enter judgment in a proceeding affecting the validity of a trust. ”

“ A trust is thereby raised which devolves on the executor, who may execute it by his own authority, or be compelled to do it by a bill filed by the creditors, either under the statute of 1785, or in virtue of the powers of a court of equity in relation to the execution of trusts, as the case may be; in this case there was such a trust fastened on the property in controversy by implication of law, and the presumed intention of the testator, which can be enforced by these complainants, unless some valid objection has been made out by the respondents. ”

“ Thus, a citizen may sue, who is a trustee at law, for the benefit of the person entitled to the trust. And an administrator, and executor may sue for the benefit of the estate, which they represent; for in each of these cases it is their personal suit. ”

“ The people must consequently take back the trust, which has been delegated to representative bodies. They must resume at least the power to initiate the legislation they want; and no law dealing with a really important subject should be passed without their direct consent. ”

“ In regard to the first of these classes it seems hardly to admit of a rational doubt that an individual or an association of individuals may dedicate property by way of trust to the purpose of sustaining, supporting, and propagating definite religious doctrines or principles, provided that in doing so they violate now law of morality, and give to the instrument by which their purpose is evidenced, the formalities which the laws require. ”

“ Duties or liabilities attached by law to a relation, (b) duties imposed by law to prevent unjust enrichment, (c) duties involved in an office or calling. In the third of these our Anglo-American procedure allows recovery either ex delicto or ex contractu. In the second our law sometimes goes on a property theory of constructive trust. ”

“ The employment of a trust as a means of benefiting those who were under disqualifications as heirs or legatees, as, for example, persons who had no testamenti factio, women incapacitated by the Voconian law, unmarried and married but childless persons incapacitated by the Julian and Papia-Poppaean law, and so on, was in time prohibited by statute ”

“ What good I see humbly I seek to do,
And live obedient to the law, in trust
That what will come, and must come, shall come well." ”

“ The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. ”

“ Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny. ”

“ Trust in th' untrustee, may To hurt make open way . For so much as the ordinarie discipline of an estate, th at hath his perfect health, doth not provide for these extraordinarie accidents, it presupposeth a bodie holding it selfe in his principall members and offices, and a common consent to observe and obey it. ”

“ Courts of equity, acting on their own inherent doctrine of discouraging for the peace of society antiquated demands, refuse to interfere in attempts to establish a stale trust, except where the trust is clearly established, or where the facts have been fraudulently and successfully concealed by the trustee from the knowledge of the cestui que trust. ”

“ A moment's hesitation would ever prove us to be bastards, not sons. The liberties of the country are a deposit, a trust, in the hands of individuals; they are an entailed estate, which the possessors have no right to dispose of; they belong to our children, and to them we are bound to transmit them as a representative body. The trust becomes tenfold more sacred in our hands, especially as it was committed to us with the fullest confidence in our sentiments, integrity, and firmness. ”

“ It is argued that the use of the term 'trust' gives the appellees all the rights which equity will give to a cestui que use. But these are only certain trust estates which, in courts of chancery, are treated as estates held in trust for the use of others. ”

“ The distinction between a power and a trust is marked and obvious. Powers, as Chief Justice Wilmot observed, are never imperative; they leave the act to be done at the will of the party to whom they are given. Trusts are always imperative, and are obligatory upon the conscience of the party intrusted. [107]
Our conclusion is, that the construction urged by the plaintiffs, of the will, importing a condition, a breach of which forfeits the devise, is not well founded. ”

“ Where the author of a trust is possessed of the legal interest in the property, a clear declaration of trust contained in or accompanying a deed or act which passes the legal estate will create a perfect executed trust, and will be established against its author and all subsequent volunteers claiming under him. ”

“ Even then it would have been necessary to establish the existence of a trust. What amounts to a trust, or out of what facts a trust may spring, are not Federal questions, and on a writ of error to a State court we can review only decisions of Federal questions. ”

“ Where lands in the hands of a party stand affected with a trust, and the person in whose hands they so stood has sold them to a third person, the cestui que trust has the right to follow the lands into the hands of any one but an innocent purchaser. ”

“ What that reasonable time is, within which a constructive trust can be enforced, depends on the circumstances of the case; but there can be few cases where it can be done, after twenty years' peaceable possession, by the person who claims in his own right, but whose acts have made him a trustee by implication. ”

“ From the nature of magistracy it may be argued thus, That power which is properly neither parental, nor marital, nor masterly and despotic, over the subjects, persons, and goods, but only fiduciary, and by way of trust, is more to be resisted than that which is properly so; but that power which is properly so, that is parental power, and marital, and masterly, may be resisted in many cases; Therefore, that power which is not so properly, but only fiduciary is more to be resisted. ”

“ Trusts are either express or implied, the former being such as are raised or created by the act of the parties, and the latter being such as are raised or created by presumption or construction of law. ”

“ It is evident that a trust is not perfectly created where there is a mere intention or voluntary agreement to establish a trust, the settlor himself contemplating some further act for the purpose of giving it completion. ”

“ It is not necessary that the trustees should have a personal interest in the trust; it is the possession of the legal estate, or a right virtute officii in the subject over which the power is to be exercised, that makes an interest, which, when coupled with the power, the latter survives. ”

“ Now, generally, it will be impossible to define, with any degree of accuracy, what the objects of the trust are to be; and it is always impossible to define the duties of the trustees and the methods to be employed by them in managing their business. ”

“ But a man-to whose issue, in events within the immediate contemplation of the testator, a splendid fortune was to pass, and in whom, in the mean time, the estate was to vest for the benefit of those who must necessarily be most near, as well as most dear to him, the objects of all his affections and all his anxieties-could hardly be deemed without some adequate equivalent for his labours in a trust which was to centre in him for the benefit of his offspring. ”

“ Congress was made simply the agent or trustee for the United States, and could not, without a breach of trust and a fraud, appropriate the subject of the trust to any other beneficiary or cestui que trust than the United States, or to the people of the United States, upon equal grounds, legal or equitable. ”

“ To attempt to control him, then, in the exercise of his constitutional authority, is for an attorney named for one specific trust to attempt to discharge the duties committed to another, named for quite a different, and for an equally specific trust. ”

“ It was desirable, that the sense of the People should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preëstablished body, but to men chosen by the People for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture. ”

“ And Secondly, the Absurdity of the very Supposition, even in the Case of a Trust conferr'd by the People. If the King breaks his Trust, the People Resume it: but who are These People? If a Representative, they are but Trustees Themselves, and may incur a Forfeiture too, by the same Argument. ”

“ In regard to deeding over your property, no one compels you to do it. I do not compel you to do it, the Trustee in Trust does not, God does not; but He says that if you will do this, that and the other thing which He has counselled for our good, do so, and prove Him. He goes to work and proves us, as we go to work and prove one another under various circumstances. ”