ABSTRACT
In deciding how equity and the common law interact it is usually said that Equity follows the law, which means that equity is generally required to follow statutes in all circumstances. This is clearly constitutional. However, there are doctrines such as the secret trust (discussed in Chapter 4) which exist solely to circumvent the Wills Act 1837 by requiring that property willed to a legatee can be subject to a trust where that legatee had promised the deceased that he or she would hold the property on trust for another person. The secret trust enforces that informal arrangement even though it is in flat contravention of the Wills Act. The doctrine of secret trust is perhaps illustrative of a more important equitable principle to the effect that Equity will not permit statute or common law to be used as an engine of fraud. So it is that a legatee, Sidney, who has promised to hold property ostensibly left to him by Tony’s will on trust for Bill, will be precluded from claiming to be a legatee under Tony’s will, entitled to take that property entirely free of any obligation to Bill, because that would mean that Tony would have been defrauded when Sidney promised to hold the property on trust for Bill rather than keeping it for himself.
