The rise of uses and trusts in the pre-industrial period

Book section : Chapter

This chapter explains how the use came into existence from the 1200s and how it developed by the 1600s into the modern trust that had more or less taken shape by the eighteenth century. It shows how the use gave the cestui or beneficial owner protection from the incidents of legal title, managerial services from a group of trustees, and crucially a power of disposition after death, by means of an informal will instruction capable of moving the benefit of both personal and real property, far outstripping the facilities of the common law. This informal dispositive power delighted owners, enraged common lawyers and the fiscal authorities, and made the institution of the use a constant locus of legal and political conflict. Echoes of historical debates over the use and early trust continue to animate the modern law.

Authors: Getzler, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2025-12-18
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198890485.013.0033
• EISBN: 9780191995927
• ISBN: 9780198890485
• Language: English
• Keywords: feudal property; land title; tenures and estates; wills gifts and transfers; mortmain and church wealth; royal and feudal taxes; trustees and good conscience; Lord Chancellor and Court of Chancery; accountability; fiduciary duties
• Subtype: Chapter