First Page
967
Abstract
It is generally held that trusts are incompatible with the basic assumptions of civil law systems. In order to discuss this statement one would have to inquire, first, what is meant by the term "trusts"; second, what assumed common characteristics of the civil law systems are being envisaged and declared to bein compatible with trusts; and third, why those characteristics should be incompatible with trusts. It is also commonly held that the Hague Convention of 1984 on the law applicable to and the recognition of trusts concerns only those trusts that are foreign to the jurisdiction in which the rules of the Convention are invoked. In order to discuss this statement, one would have to inquire when a trust is sufficiently "foreign" to warrant the protection of the Convention. This article asserts that trusts are not incompatible with the basic assumptions of civil law systems. Moreover, the Hague Convention does not require an element of foreignness other than the simple fact that a trust is governed by a foreign law. These two submissions are obviously interrelated and, once they are accepted, the conclusion follows that the Hague Convention allows ratifying civil law countries to have the same access to trusts that is peculiar to their common law counterparts. In other words, this article contends that trusts can be formed in Italy and in Holland just as they would in England or in Tennessee, provided they are governed not by Italian or Dutch law, but by English or Tennessee law.
Recommended Citation
Maurizio Lupoi,
The Civil Law Trust,
32 Vanderbilt Law Review
967
(2021)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vjtl/vol32/iss4/3