A Project for Improvement of Trust Law

Abstract

I WANT to advance the thesis that trust men have a great opportunity to take the lead at this time in revaluing and readjusting trust law; that the time is ripe for taking an inventory of trust law, state by state, through a cooperative research and discussion project, and curing weaknesses and defects by statute. There are several reasons for this belief. The first is that Anglo-American trust law is well developed and mature. It is not a branch of the law brought into being by recent social, mechanical, political or economic changes. It is not like the law of aeronautics, the undeveloped by-product of recent invention; or like the law of administrative agencies, in a state of flux and expansion as a result of recent governmental and political movements. The law of trusts is the outcome of more than 300 years of English and 150 years of American case law. Its principles have been announced, expounded, and developed in thousands of opinions by chancellors and probate judges. Almost every conceivable question which could arise in the creation and administration of trusts has received some