Abstract
All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter describes how trusts may arise in relation to land, providing an overview of key situations in which a party may acquire an equitable interests under a trust of land. It considers express, resulting, and constructive trusts of land. A resulting trust can arise in favour of A, where A purchases or contributes to the purchase of land held by B, or in some cases where A transfers land to B without receiving anything in return. Constructive trusts arise in a number of diverse circumstances in which it can be said that it would be unconscionable for the legal owner to assert his or her own beneficial ownership and to deny the beneficial interest of another. They may arise, for example, under the doctrine in Rochefoucauld v Boustead and the Pallant v Morgan equity. The doctrine in Rochefoucauld v Boustead imposes a constructive trust to prevent a transferee of land from fraudulently relying on the absence of compliance with formalities to deny a trust pursuant to which the land was transferred. The Pallant v Morgan constructive trust can arise where one party acquires land pursuant to an informal commercial joint venture and reneges on an agreement that another party will have an interest in the land. The trust has been categorized as a form of ‘common intention constructive trust’ but this categorization is contentious.
