A Brief History of the Development of the Trust Concept.

Article written by David Arklie

When you work for twenty years in an industry such as the offshore trust industry, it is inevitable that you start to take an interest in how it all began – where and when did the trust concept arise? Why did it come into being and how has the concept developed over the centuries.

As a fledging trust administrator I was always told parrot fashion – "It is an English common law concept to do with the crusades when the knights left their land in the hands of trusted people in case they never returned from battle." The ‘trusted people’ (usually the church who turned out to be very untrustworthy and kept a lot of it for themselves) having an obligation to pass on the land to the rightful heir."