Discretionary Trusts in UK Law

Their Lordships consider that the more principled and correct approach is to regard the right to seek disclosure of trust documents as one aspect of the court's inherent jurisdiction to supervise, and if necessary to intervene in, the administration of trusts.

Their Lordships have already indicated their view that a beneficiary's right to seek disclosure of trust documents, although sometimes not inappropriately described as a proprietary right, is best approached as one aspect of the court's inherent jurisdiction to supervise (and where appropriate intervene in) the administration of trusts.

When a settlor creates a settlement he purports to divest himself of assets in favour of the trustee, and the trustee accepts them on the basis of the trusts of the settlement. I cannot understand on what basis a third party could claim, merely by reference to the unilateral intentions -of the settlor, that the settlement was a -sham and that the assets in fact remained the settlor's property. To set that sort of case up the donee must also be shown to be a party to the alleged sham.

The conclusion which I would reach, implicit in the previous discussion, is that the wide distinction between the validity test for powers and that for trust powers, is unfortunate and wrong, that the rule recently fastened upon the courts by I.R.C. v. Broadway Cottages Trust ought to be discarded, and that the test for the validity of trust powers ought to be similar to that accepted by this House in Re Gulbenkian's Settlement for powers, namely that the trust is valid if it can be said with certainty that any given individual is or is not a member of the class.

I would venture to amplify this by saying that the Court, if called upon to execute the trust power, will do so in the manner best calculated to give effect to the settlor's or testator's intentions. It may do so by appointing new trustees, or by authorising or directing representative persons of the classes of beneficiaries to prepare a scheme of distribution, or even, should the proper basis for distribution appear by itself directing the trustees so to distribute.

The appointment was only to operate during the trust period and it is I think right that the only operative effect of the appointment was to take the settler's wife out of the specified class for the purposes of the discretionary trust and of the power to advance capital and of the power of appointment and to restore her to the class of persons in whose favour capital could be advanced or benefits could be conferred under an appointment as from the time when she might become the widow of the testator.

The payments (or other benefits) do not have to be made directly to the fiduciary. Bribes may be paid to third parties close to the agent, such as family members or discretionary trusts, or simply to those whom the agent wishes to benefit. The test is whether the payment (or other benefit) puts the fiduciary in a real (as opposed to a fanciful) position of potential conflict between interest and duty.