This book chapter, prepared for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law, canvasses the fiduciary principles applicable to a trustee of a donative, irrevocable private trust subject. The focus is on prevailing American law. The chapter examines (a) the trigger for finding a trust...

In a trust decanting, a trustee who under the terms of a trust (the first trust) has a discretionary power over distribution uses that power to distribute the trust property to a new trust (the second trust) with updated provisions, leaving behind the sediment of the first trust’s stale...

This article reports the results of an empirical study of the effect of the new prudent investor rule on asset allocation by institutional trustees. Using federal banking data spanning 1986 through 1997, the authors find that, after adoption of the new prudent investor rule, institutional...

Perpetual trusts are an established feature of today’s estate planning firmament. Yet little-noticed provisions in the constitutions of nine states, including in five states that purport to allow perpetual trusts by statute, proscribe “perpetuities.” This Article examines those provisions...

This article reports the results of an empirical study of the effect of the new prudent investor rule on asset allocation by institutional trustees. Using federal banking data spanning 1986 through 1997, the authors find that, after adoption of the new prudent investor rule, institutional...

The theme of this essay, a commentary on two papers forthcoming in the same volume on “The Worlds of the Trust,” is that trust law is not a species of property law or contract law, but rather is a species of organizational law. Organizational law supplies a set of contractarian rules, some...

The trust has long competed with the corporation as a form of business organization. Although today the corporate form dominates the trust for the organization of operating enterprises, the trust dominates the corporation in a handful of specialized niches. The market value of these niches...