[2025] EWCA Civ 1211

As I have already observed, s.7 of the Statute of Frauds provided that in the absence of writing the trust was “utterly void and of none effect”. Those words, however, were not construed by the courts as meaning that a lack of sufficient evidence meant there was no trust.

In Ambrose v Ambrose (1716) 1 P. Wms. 321, for example, in a decision later affirmed by the House of Lords, it was held that a declaration of trust by a person in whose name land was purchased, although it was signed only after the death of the beneficiary, was sufficient to render the pre-existing trust enforceable for the benefit of the deceased beneficiary’s heirs. The point was indorsed in Forster v Hale (1798) 3 Ves 696 (upheld on appeal by Lord Loughborough LC, (1800) 5 Ves 308, at p.315). In that case, a trust was declared by implication from various letters, but not signed or dated. The Master of the Rolls, Sir R.P. Arden, at p.707, said:

“It is not required by the Statute, that a trust should be created in writing; and the words of the Statute are very particular in the clause (sect. 7) respecting the declarations of trust. It does not by any means require, that all trusts shall be created only in writing; but that they shall be manifested and proved by writing; plainly meaning, that there should be evidence in writing, proving, that there was such a trust. Therefore unquestionably it is not necessarily to be created by writing: but it must be evidenced by writing; and then the Statute is complied with; and indeed the great danger of parol declarations, against which the Statute was intended to guard, is entirely taken away.”

This passage also answers a point made by CGC, that “manifested”, in order not to be otiose, must be read as imposing a requirement that the trust must be created in writing. The section has consistently been interpreted as requiring no more than that the trust must be proved by written evidence.