ABSTRACT
Anyone approaching the study of the English law of trusts comes across ‘the rule in Saunders v Vautier’, named after the 1841 decision of the Court of Chancery in which it is currently assumed that it was laid down. In its narrowest form, the rule provides that the beneficiary of a trust of shares and their dividends, which is to take effect ‘when’ the beneficiary reaches the age of majority, with no gift over, is entitled to have the shares transferred to him as soon as he comes of age. The effect of the implementation of the rule is to terminate the trust, notwithstanding the settlor’s contrary intention, which is simply overridden.
In this article we intend to show that a distinction between two meanings of ‘when’ in testamentary dispositions underpinned the rule: a conditional meaning and a dispositive meaning. That distinction was taken from the jurisprudence of the spiritual courts in England, based on a development of Roman law sources in the European ius commune which then found its way into the French and other civil law codes. Academic writings have ignored this side of the story, which is highly relevant from a comparative law perspective.
€
Maurizio Lupoi and Michele Graziadei, The Historical Context of Saunders v Vautier, Edinburgh Law Review, volume 29, issue 1.
Leave a Reply