In Garron and Garron, Trustees of the Garron Family Trust v.
The Queen, released by the Tax Court of Canada on September
10, 2009, Madam Justice Woods applied a new and novel test to
determine the residency of a trust. She rejected the established
test in the landmark decision of Trustees of the Thibodeau
Family Trust, 78 DTC 6326 (FCTD) that a trust is resident in
the jurisdiction in which the trustees reside and exercise their
discretion. In fact she held that Thibodeau does not stand
for the proposition that the residence of the trustee is always the
deciding factor in determining the residence of a trust. In
Garron, Madam Justice Woods held that the central
management and control test, which is the established test for
determining the residency of a corporation, should also apply to a
trust. The central management and control test is that a
corporation [and now a trust?] is resident where its central
management and control actually abides.
