Equity and Trusts- Non charitable Un-incorporated assosiations - Essay Example

st have a cestui que trust and should be for the benefit of individuals; (2) it must have a definite object, and (3) the court can enforce it favour of someone.1 To be valid, a non-charitable trust must have an ascertainable beneficiary in whose favour performance of the trust may be decreed. Consequently, purposes trusts or objects are invalid because a purpose or object cannot seek enforcement, but trusts for charitable purposes are valid because they are enforceable by the Attorney-General.

2 The statutory list of charitable purposes in found in Section 2 of the Charities Act 2006 which provides as follows: Not being included as one of the charitable purposes, the maintenance of the three elderly widows and a worthy cause as a purpose cannot be considered as charitable. As a consequence, gifts (consisting of donations from well-wishers and the £10,000 raised from dinner guests) to the association, a non-charitable unincorporated association, are subject to (a) the rule against remoteness of vesting, which requires that the interests of the beneficiaries must vest within the perpetuity period; (b) the rule that, for there to be a valid trust, there must be a beneficiary or cestui que trust in whose favour performance of the trust may be decreed or the beneficiary principle; and (c) the general principle of trust law that the objects of the trust must be sufficiently certain.

3 Hence, such rule does not apply to funds raised from members’ subscriptions because as discussed below it is contractual. In the case of the £10,000 raised from dinner guests, the foregoing rules have been met because the object is sufficiently certain and vested upon a designated beneficiary (the three elderly widows) within a perpetuity period. Nevertheless, the law has recognised non-charitable purpose trusts. Thus, it was stated that such trusts which are of a somewhat anomalous kind include "trusts for the benefit of unincorporated associations”.

4 Thus, in Leahy v