ABSTRACT
The Law of Charities 4 INTRODUCTION Charitable trusts are valid public purpose trusts. This means simply that it is perfectly possible to establish a trust for the achievement of a purpose, provided that the purpose in law is regarded as charitable. As far as charities are concerned, it is not important if there is no human beneficiary capable of enforcing the trust, because the Attorney General can take action in respect of all charitable trusts on behalf of the Crown. Moreover, valid charitable trusts are not subject to certain aspects of the perpetuity rule and may be of unlimited duration. Furthermore, when compared to valid private trusts (that is, trusts for human objects), charitable trusts have other advantages; they enjoy considerable fiscal privileges including exemption from many taxes. Hence, many of the decided cases involve the Inland Revenue seeking to deny charitable status. Likewise, there are special rules applicable to the failure of charitable trusts (the principles of cy-près) which may oust the normal rules of resulting trusts, and there is a separate body of rules dealing with the administration of charities and the conduct of business by charitable trustees.
