3. Express trusts: trusts and powers

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter considers express trusts, which are flexible devices for structuring the benefits that property can provide, particularly in ways that are impossible or inconvenient to do simply by making an outright gift. The discussions cover fixed trusts, discretionary trusts, and powers of appointment; duties and powers virtute officii (powers given to office holders), personal powers (powers nominatum), powers ‘in the nature of a trust’, fiduciary powers, bare and mere powers; interests under fixed trust; the principle in Saunders v Vautier; trusts void on grounds of public policy and illegal trusts the rule against perpetuities; the enforcement and judicial control of discretionary trusts and powers of appointment; excessive and fraudulent exercises of powers; interests under discretionary trusts and powers of appointment; locus standi to enforce the trust and beneficiaries’ rights to information, and protective trusts.