Abstract:
The right of beneficiaries to information and the trustee’s duty of disclosure tend to accentuate the tension between ensuring that the beneficiaries’ proprietary interests in the trust are vindicated and other concerns such as not placing the trustee under duties so onerous as to discourage trusteeship, balancing obligations of confidentiality owed by the trustee to third parties, respecting the settlor’s freedom to dispose of his property, and maintaining harmony rather than sowing discord in family trusts. This article analyses the tension, and seeks to chart a way forward.