charities - comprehensive revision notes

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  • Created by: andreag67
  • Created on: 01-06-17 21:20

FOUR CLASSES OF CHARITY   Revision notes for charitable trusts LLB Law.

 

Hope you find them useful as I did. I decided to share as it takes so long to compile which could be better spent learning something else. So, I am giving you back time. Use it wisely, and bag yourself top marks. You can thank me later. lol

For a trust to be termed charitable it must benefit or be intended to benefit the public at large.   In Re Horbourn Air Raid Distress Fund [1946] Ch. 194 an emergency fund which had been built up during the war had been used partly for comforts for ex-employees serving in the forces and later for employees who had suffered distress from the air raids.  An application was made to court with respect to surplus funds arising from this fund and it was held that because of the absence of a public element no charitable trust had been created and the surplus funds should be returned to the contributors.

 

In the case of Oppenheim V. Tobacco Securities Trust Co Ltd [1951] A.C. 297 Trustees had been directed under a settlement to apply monies in providing for the education of children of employees or ex-employees of BAT or any of its subsidiaries or allied companies.  The employees numbered over 110,000.  the question was whether the settlement was a charitable trust.  The House of Lords held that although the group of persons indicated was numerous, the nexus between them was employment by a particular employer and it therefore followed that the Trust did not satisfied the test of public benefit which was required to establish it as charitable.

 

In Re Compton [1945] Ch. 123 a trust for the education of the descendants of 3 named persons was held not to be a charitable trust because the beneficiaries were identified by reference to a personal relationship and it therefore lacked the quality of a public trust.  It was a family trust and not one for the benefit of a section of the public.  Therefore, an aggregate of individuals ascertained by reference to some personal tie such as blood or contract for example the relations of a particular individual, the members of a particular family or the members of a particular association does not amount to the public or a section thereof for the purpose of the general rule and will not accordingly rank as legally charitable.

 

1.         RELIEF OF POVERTY

 

Poverty does not constitute destitution it can cover for example the provision of flats at economic rents to benefit old people of small means or to assist widows and orphans of the deceased officers of a bank as in Re Coulthurst [1951] Ch. 661.  Conversely a person is not necessarily poor merely because he cannot afford to provide for himself the advantages that the trust will give him.  Thus, a trust to provide dwellings for the working classes in Re Saunders Wills Trust [1954] Ch. 265 was held not charitable and so too a trust to

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