Trusts: Creation and Administration

Overview

Trusts: Creation and Administration is an important area of legal practice and scholarship that addresses how legal systems regulate, facilitate, or resolve matters related to this field. The legal framework encompasses statutory provisions, regulatory requirements, judicial precedents, and evolving standards that shape rights, obligations, and procedures.

Legal Framework

Trusts and estates law governs the transfer of property during life and at death, including the creation and administration of trusts, the execution and interpretation of wills, and the distribution of assets through intestate succession when no valid will exists.

Procedure and Practice

Core legal principles include the three certainties required for express trust creation (intention, subject matter, objects), the separation of legal and equitable title, fiduciary duties of trustees (loyalty, prudence, impartiality), and the rule against perpetuities limiting the duration of trusts.

Contemporary Issues

Contemporary issues include the use of revocable living trusts for probate avoidance, directed trusts separating investment and administrative functions, trust decanting and modification, asset protection trusts, digital asset succession planning, and the Uniform Trust Code’s modernization of trust law.