This is the editor's conclusion to a collection of six texts on trusts in civilian and mixed jurisdictions, arising out of a series of Civil Law Workshops held at the Quebec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law during 2008-9

Sometimes trustees regret a decision they have made regarding trust assets, often because it has unforeseen taxation implications. This paper explores the legal techniques that may be available for undoing such a decision. This includes a discussion of the nature and limits of rectification,...

The French jurist Pierre Lepaulle argued that the common law trust could be best understood, in civilian terms, as a patrimony by appropriation. This argument has been influential in some civilian receptions of the trust. In fact, Lepaulle misunderstood the nature of the common law trust, which...

Common law doctrine states that although there are many similarities, the estate of a deceased person is not a trust. The doctrine is unclear, however, as to exactly what are the differences, or why they exist. This paper begins by explaining the conceptual differences between a common law...

This text is a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the New Private Law. It aims to answer the question, “what can the civil law tradition tell us about the New Private Law?” It seeks to do this by offering one civilian’s perspective on private law, on U.S. private law, and on the...

This paper explores the ways in which Canadian legal orders address the tension between freedom of testation and the claims of the family of the deceased.The province of Quebec has a civilian law of succession, while the common law governs in the other provinces and in the territories. Under...

The author argues that US law is in danger of undermining its own coherence in the pursuit of competition for trust business with offshore jurisdictions. This has happened partly due to a desire to allow those who create trusts to do whatever they wish. But US law, like other common law systems,...

Will-substitutes are legal techniques that allow the disposition of property on death outside of the deceased's estate. Such techniques, by reducing the assets in the estate, have the potential to harm the interests of creditors of the estate. This paper aims to identify some of the ways in...

In 1944, the House of Lords held that outside of the field of charitable bequests, a testator cannot delegate the power to select who will benefit from his estate. This holding has never been called into question by English appellate courts, and has been followed in many Commonwealth...

Canadian law sometimes allows gain-based remedies for certain wrongful acts. There is a strong suggestion that gain-based remedies are available in the common law provinces for torts and perhaps breaches of contract, but the courts have been hesitant. Common law provinces have also been willing...