The Uses and Abuses of Constructive Trusts: The Experience of England and Wales

Abstract

This paper, which was first given on 19 October 1996 at a seminar on constructive trusts organised by the Universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde with the Scottish Law Commission, examines the role that constructive trusts play in English law. It explains the amorphous nature of such trusts, how they are rooted in concepts of equity and conscience, and how they are often imposed in accordance with equity's traditional grounds for intervention. The central thesis of the paper is that a constructive trust, when imposed, will cause the trustee to become subject to one or more fiduciary obligations or incidents. One situation in which this is not the case— where a constructive trust is employed to impose an encumbrance on a transferee of property—is criticised. There is also a critique of the recourse to equitable maxims as a reason for the imposition of constructive trusts. The paper concludes with some reflections on the likely path of development of constructive trusts in English law and whether they ought to be more widely received into Scots law.