Lady Justice - The Importance
Lady Justice, blindfolded with scales and sword by California Criminal Defense Lawyer Rob Miller. In an effort to balance out the scales, I’m sharing a legal technique called “the trust.” My hope is that it will enable webmasters to buy sites and sell them without fear that their hard SEO work will go to naught. Disclaimer: As I’m just a law student and not a lawyer, let alone an expert on trusts, please only take this as information, not legal advice, and please correct any errors you find. What is a trust? Trusts evolved through the [feudal] tax-evasion efforts of commoners and low-level knights in the Middle Ages. Before running off to rape and pillage in the Crusades, a person (”A”) would leave their property with a trusted friend (B) - who thus acquired legal title through an inter-vivos transfer - to the use of A’s family or kids. (The reason this was tax-evasion was that higher up lords or the King would perceive taxes if property was transferred in a will. By transferring inter-vivos, you had no taxes to pay.) Problems arose where the “trusted” friend tried to claim the property for his own use rather than be its custodian for A’s family. The courts of equity resolved them by holding that the “cestui que trust” (today known as the trustee) was bound to hold the property for the benefit of A’s family. A’s family thus had what is known as “beneficial title.” The difference between beneficial title and legal title is that the former was created and enforced by the courts of equity (whose jurisdiction was more about morality) while the latter was enforced by the courts of common law. Today both courts are merged. But for reasons of history and lawyers having fun finding new uses for outdated legal mechanisms, the trust (the “use” ’s modern cousin) is still around. So the trust is by definition a devise of property to another party for the benefit of a third party. The devise, aka settlement, is made by the settlor (A). The person receiving the property is known as the trustee (B), and he holds legal title. B holds the property in trust for C, the third party designated by the settlor. C has the beneficial title and is thus known as the beneficiary. (A is left with nothing, though if a court finds that the trust “failed,” the property will usually return to him.) Note: You can have trusts created by wills nowadays. It need not be an inter-vivos transfer. Which makes sense, since we no longer have the feudal tax system. Source: http://www.roiproject.com |
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