Statutes
| Date | 01 March 1955 |
| Published date | 01 March 1955 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1955.tb00290.x |
| Author | P. S. Atiyah |
STATUTES
CHARITABLE
TRUSTS
(VALIDATION)
ACT,
1954
THE Charitable Trusts (Validation) Act,
1954,
must be one of the
most remarkable Law Reform Acts ever passed by Parliament-
remarkable as much for what
it
excludes as for what
it
contains.
As a general rule one naturally expects that a Law Reform Act will
alter the law for the future and in exceptional cases it may also
operate retrospectively. The draftsmen of this Act, however,
(following the recommendations of the Nathan Committee) have
scorned this well-tried method, and have produced an Act which
seems to be based
on
an entirely new conception of legislative
policy.
The main provisions of the Act may be summarised as follows:
Dispositions of property for objects not exclusively charitable
which took effect before December
16, 1952,
are retrospectively
validated. Thus a gift
''
for such charitable
or
benevolent objects
as the trustees may select
"
(such as that held void
in
Chichester
Diocesan
Fund
v.
Simpson
[1944]
AX.
341)
is now validated.
This
validation is to have effect for the period before the commencement
of the Act
''
as
if
the whole of the declared objects were charitable
"
(s.
1
(2)
(a)
),
and for the period after that commencement
"
as
if
the provision had required the property to be held
or
applied for
the declared objects in
so
far only as they authorise use for charit-
able purposes
')
(s.
1
(2)
(b)
).
This means that
if,
in
the above
example, the property had before the commencement of the Act
been applied for charitable and benevolent non-charitable objects
the application would be validated, while
if
no
property had been
applied when the Act came into force
it
may be validly applied for
the declared charitable objects only.
The Act does not apply where any of the property has been paid
to the person entitled by reason of the invalidity of the disposition
(s.
2 (2)
),
nor
does it prejudice the rights of any person
so
entitled
if
his right accrued less than six years before December
16,
1952,
and he has given express notice of
his
claim to the persons
administering the property
(s.
3
(1)).
To the casual reader of the Act (if there be such a person) two
questions at once present themselves:
(1)
Why is the Act retro-
spective, and in particular why was December
16,
1952,
selected as
the vital date?
(2)
Why does the reform not apply to future
dispositions
?
The answer to both these questions is to be found largely
in
the
report of the Nathan Committee.
In
the first place the Nathan
Committee was much concerned by the suggestion that many trusts
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