The donor purported to make a voluntary gift of leasehold premises and stock in trade by endorsing on the lease ‘This deed and all thereto belonging I give to E from this time forth, and all the stock in trade.’ This document was delivered to E’s mother on his behalf.
Held: No valid declaration of trust was made in favour of E. For a man to make himself a trustee, he must express an intention to become a trustee.
Jessel MR said: ‘The principle is a very simple one. A man may transfer his property, without valuable consideration in two ways: he may either do such acts as amount in law to a conveyance or assignment of the property, and thus completely divest himself of the legal ownership, in which case the person who by those acts acquires the property takes it beneficially, or on trust as the case may be; or the legal owner of the property may, by one or other of the modes recognised as amounting to a valid declaration of trust, constitute himself a trustee, and, without an actual transfer of the legal title, may so deal with the property as to deprive himself of its beneficial ownership, and declare that he will hold it from that time forward on trust for the other person. It is true he need not use the words, ‘I declare myself trustee’, but he must do something which is equivalent to it, and use expressions which have that meaning, for, however anxious the court may be to carry out a man’s intentions, it is not at liberty to construe the words otherwise than according to their proper meaning.’
Sir George Jessel MR
(1874) LR 18 Eq 11, [1874] UKLawRpEq 67
Commonlii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Pennington and Another v Waine, Crampton and others CA 4-Mar-2002
The deceased had made a gift of shares. She had executed a transfer, and acting upon the promise, the donee had agreed to become a director which he could only do if he also became a shareholder. The transfer was delivered to the deceased’s agent, . .
Cited – Clarence House Ltd v National Westminster Bank Plc CA 8-Dec-2009
The defendant tenants, anticipating that the landlord might delay or refuse consent to a subletting entered into a ‘virtual assignment’ of the lease, an assignment in everything but the deed and with no registration. The lease contained a standard . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 17 September 2021; Ref: scu.183416 br>