The Three Certainties Flashcards
Paul v Constance
P & C lived together as man and wife, held a joint bank account, he said “it’s as much yours as mine”, was sufficient intention to create a trust.
Re Kayford
Mail order company was in financial trouble, was ordered to put customer moneys in separate account, used existing account renaming it to a trust account after a month, held that the money was on trust for the customers.
Re Farepak Food and Gifts
Christmas savings club went insolvent. Customer account wasn’t correctly identified by deed, held that this mistake could be rectified but money that had been received earlier and had not gone into this account was not on trust.
Jones v Lock
No intention can be read into a failed gift.
Re Golay’s Will Trusts
Held that the phrase “to receive a reasonable income from” was sufficiently clear in relation to describing the subject matter of a trust.
Re London Wine Co
Wine was bought by customers but remained in a warehouse, not seperated out into specific customer orders. Held that no trust had arisen despite clear intention as no cases had been separated from the bulk of wine and attributed to various customers.
Re Goldcorp
Company dealing with precious metals was held not to have metals on trust for customers as they were not separated out. At any rate there wasn’t enough to fulfil all the customers orders. If the metals had serial numbers attributed to specific customers there would have been a trust.
Hunter v Moss
Concerned intangible property - shares were on trust for the claimant. Couldn’t be said which specific shares were involved, however because they were in the same class and company there was sufficient certainty.
White v Shortall (Australian)
Rejected the reasoning in Hunter v Moss.
McPhail v Doulton
Moved on from traditional test that it must be possible to draw up list of beneficiaries, requirements: conceptual certainty, evidential certainty and administrative workability.
Re Baden
Where language has many different meanings it is not conceptually certain. “Friends” is not a conceptually certain term, however the court can give term a definition to make it conceptually certain, in this case relative was defined as “descendant of a common ancestor”.
Re Hay’s Trust
For power of appointment - must have some idea of the size of the class and must be possible for the court to carry out obligations. Scale of issue can be understood where size of class is estimated.
West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council case
Gift to the inhabitants of West Yorkshire was void for administrative unworkability as the class was too wide.
Re Gibbard
“Any of my old friends” valid because it was a power of appointment not a trust.
Re Barlow
Testator gave her paintings to local authority with instruction to let family and friends each purchase a painting. Held it was a series of individual gifts each subject to a condition precedent.
