Legal Definition of Trust
Property given to a trustee to manage for the benefit of a third person.2 min read
Property given to a trustee to manage for the benefit of a third person. Generally the beneficiary gets interest and dividends on the trust assets for a set number of years. An agreement under which one person transfers title to specific property to another who agrees to hold or manage it for the benefit of a third person.
Further Defining Trust
An equitable right, title or interest in property, real or personal, distinct from its legal ownership; or it is a personal obligation for paying, delivering or performing anything, where the person trusting has no real. right or security, for by, that act he confides altogether to the faithfulness of those entrusted. This is its most general meaning, and includes deposits, bailments, and the like. In its more technical sense, it may be defined to be an obligation upon a person, arising out of a confidence reposed in him, to apply property faithfully, and according to such confidence. 2. Trusts were probably derived from the civil law. The fidei commissum, is not dissimilar to a trust. Trusts are either express or implied.
Express Trusts
Express trusts are those which are created in express terms in the deed, writing or will. The terms to create an express trust will be sufficient, if it can be fairly collected upon the face of the instrument that a trust was intended. Express trusts are usually found in preliminary sealed agreements, such as marriage articles, or articles for the purchase of land; in formal conveyances, such as marriage settlements, terms for years, mortgages, assignments for the payment of debts, raising portions or other purposes; and in wills and testaments, when the bequests involve fiduciary interests for private benefit or public charity,, they may be created even by parol.
Implied Trusts
2d. Implied trusts are those which without being expressed, are deducible from the nature of the transaction, as matters of intent; or which are superinduced upon the transaction by operation of law, as matters of equity, independently of the particular intention of the parties.
The most common form of an implied trust is where property or money is delivered by one person to another, to be by the latter delivered to a third person. These implied trusts greatly extend over the business and pursuits of men: a few examples will be given.
Example of a Land Trust
When land is purchased by one man in the name of another, and the former pays the consideration money, the land will in general be held by the grantee in Trust for the person who so paid the consideration money. When real property is purchased out of partnership funds, and the title is taken in the name of one of the partners, he will hold it in trust for all the partners. When a contract is made for the sale of land, in equity the vendor is immediately deemed a trustee for the vendee of the estate; and the vendee, a trustee for the vendor of the purchase money; and by this means there is an equitable conversion of the property.
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