ABSTRACT
The trust is peculiar to systems of law that are based on English law; therefore, the trust is found in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and other Commonwealth countries, but it is not indigenous to the civil code jurisdictions of Europe and elsewhere based, for example, on the Napoleonic Code Civil or the Austro-German code. The modern form of trust considered in this book is unique to Anglo-centric legal systems because it is a product of English history. However, there is reason to suppose that the idea of the trust was first developed in the Middle East to provide for quasi-charitable purposes within families in the form of the ‘waqf ’ (Lim, 2001). Therefore, the trust idea may not have been English originally. Recently, however, other jurisdictions have enacted statutes to import the trust concept because of its enormous usefulness in domestic and commercial legal practice.
