Cultivating Trust Law: Four Phases of Offshore Trust Law’s Development
Document Type
Book Section
Publication Date
12-2025
ISBN
9780198890485
DOI
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198890485.013.0037
Abstract
Many of today’s international financial centres (IFCs) inherited English trust law through their association with Britain. Offshore trust law began with simple discretionary trusts assisting settlors in avoiding taxes. As IFCs altered English rules on discrete matters such as perpetuities, created statutory frameworks that altered the body of traditional English precedent more broadly, and invented new forms of trusts such as non-charitable purpose trusts, offshore trust law increasingly diverged from its English parent, presenting offshore courts with new fact patterns, new uses, and new controversies that have led to a series of important decisions. All these factors have transformed offshore trust law from a copy of English law into a centre of innovation in trusts.
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Editor
Mark Bennett, Lusina Ho, Adam Hofri-Winogradow, & Richard Nolan
Book Title
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws
Recommended Citation
Andrew P. Morriss,
Cultivating Trust Law: Four Phases of Offshore Trust Law’s Development,
in
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws
(Mark Bennett, Lusina Ho, Adam Hofri-Winogradow, & Richard Nolan eds., 2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/2352