Knight Trust Essay

In Knight v knight, Lord Langdale has mentioned that in order to establish a valid trust, all the three certainties are required, namely, certainty of intention, subject-matter and objects . It can be argued that the essence of a trust is to impose a binding obligation on the trustees . According to the case facts, it can be said that Adela has directed her executor and trustee, Russell Rance to hold 500 of her shares in Rainbow Limited for her nephew, Denzel, in the full conviction that he will sell and divide the proceeds equally among the children she has fostered. Shares are intangible property. The Court of Appeal in Hunter v Moss, held that a declaration of 50 shares from 950 did not fail for certainty of subject-matter because if all

It can be argued that the estate has been segregated by Adele from a larger amount. The executor can calculate the residuary estate, being all the property of Adele remaining available for distribution after all prior legacies, debts, costs and so forth have been paid. This is similar to the case, Estate of Last, property was left to a brother on terms that ‘‘at his death anything that is left, that came from me’’ was to pass to specified persons. This was held to be a trust. Additionally, the certainty of objects has to be considered here. If the requirements of certainty of words and subject-matter were satisfied, there might still be a problem with certainty of words. This would be a discretionary trust and the test for certainty is that laid down by Lord Wilberforce from the House of Lords in McPhail v Doulton. The meanings of the words used are clear but the definition of the beneficiaries is wide and does not form ‘anything like class’. The trust is administratively unworkable since it is almost impossible to look for every person who attended the televised concert and who recorded it on their mobile devices. The trustee, Russel Rance, needs to know for whom the property is held on trust so that he can make an appropriate distribution of the trust property. According to Re Hay’ST, administratively unworkable renders the discretionary trust