Trust law miscellany

Capricious trusts

In Brown v Burdett (1882) 21 Ch D 667, the testatrix left her house to trustees upon trust to block up all the windows and doors in every room (except those in which she directed that a housekeeper and his wife should reside) for a period of 20 years and thereafter the property was to pass to the beneficiaries named in her will. The judgment of Bacon VC is, to say the least, succinct: ‘I think I must ‘unseal’ this useless, undisposed of property’. The case highlights the fundamental question of how far it is open to a testator to divert property by his will from family and dependants purely on the basis of some eccentric notions of vanity or self-expression.

Proprietary estoppel

In the context of a claim based on the doctrine of proprietary estoppel, the legal owner’s assurance may take a variety of different forms and a claim will not fail simply because the right