4 - The relationship with co-trustees and agents

Summary

The day to day management of a trust comprised the taking and implementation of policy decisions and attention to a quantity of administrative detail. Decisions as to both the making and the supervision of investments, as to payments of income for maintenance, advancements of capital and the preservation of the body of trustees, were all matters which had to be addressed and resolved. By the terms of the trust instrument and the law, this responsibility fell on the trustee. Not only was he the legal owner, and as such the person required to deal with the title to the property, he was bound by Equity to manage that property according to the terms of his trust. This considerable burden was not, however, one a single trustee generally had to bear alone.

The very great majority of nineteenth-century trusts, whether inter vivos or testamentary, appointed several trustees. There were no legal constraints on the numbers of trustees, though in practice there was an upper limit of four where Government stock was to be held in trust, and the reasons for preferring a group of trustees were essentially threefold: continuity, security and the sharing of the burden of the administration. The holding of trust property by the trustees as joint tenants meant that the principle of survivorship applied, and as one died, the remaining trustees took by the jus accrescendi.