Resulting Trusts

This text examines the true nature of the resulting trust and the question of whether the trusts brought into being to reverse unjust enrichment should not include resulting trusts. In doing so it examines all recent doctrine, a mass of case law and the views of courts in a number of jurisdictions.

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The resulting trust has received little attention in recent years and this may be because, until relatively recently, the law relating to resulting trusts was thought to be settled and uncontroversial. Most of the current academic writing about resulting trusts is found in the established textbooks on equity and trusts, but these tend to provide little more than catalogues of the situations in which resulting trusts arise. There is, however, very little consensus on the principle by which the resulting trust operates, including the fundamental question whether it arises by opertaion of law or depends on the presumed intention to create a trust. This book examines the true nature of the resulting trust and the question whether the trusts brought into being to reverse unjust enrichment should not include resulting trusts. It then considers whether, when resulting trusts are properly understood, it does turn out that it is through the resulting trust that equity makes its principle contribution to reversing unjust enrichment.
This book examines principally the case law of the UK, Canada and Australia, and it also makes reference to the views of academic commentators as found in the standard texts and law journals.