TSEM6235 - Legal background to trusts & estates: what a trust needs
A trust needs a
- settlor
- corpus (trust fund) - the settled property
- beneficiary
- trustee.
It also needs certainties of
- words - a clear indication that a trust is being set up
- subject matter - the property that has been settled
- object - who is the beneficiary.
If the trust does not contain these three certainties, it is invalid. The transferred property is held on a resulting trust for the settlor.