by Robert Miller, LL.B., Cedar Trust Company Limited, Hamilton, Bermuda
This century has seen enormous changes in legal entities and relationships. Powerful influences have included two World Wars, a serious Depression, vast global socioeconomic change, and phenomenal advances in technology, communications and transport. Regulations, constraints, administrative demands and general liabilities of individuals and business entities, from being reasonably predictable and manageable, have burgeoned to a point where the management of business and personal affairs, including risk management, have become more essential and much more sophisticated.
Features of the 'trust essence' are:
- it is a legal relationship, not an entity (although US law recognises an element of separate legal existence), under which a trustee looks after assets for a 'beneficiary';
