TRUSTS-EXECUTORS AS TRUSTEES-EXISTENCE OF A RES SUFFICIENT TO CONSTITUTE A TRUST

Authors

Abstract

Testator provided in his will that $35,000 of the estate be set aside in trust for the life of his widow. E, executor of the estate, being named trustee, posted bond, and, while heavily indebted to the estate, attempted to transfer the trust fund to himself as trustee from himself as executor by means of a check upon the estate payable to himself as trustee, which he endorsed and deposited to the credit of his own personal account in the same bank upon which it was drawn. The probate court, treating the check as a valid segregation of the trust fund, discharged the executor and his sureties. During the next six years E paid the widow the legal rate of interest regardless of the fact that he never thereafter segregated any fund for the trust or opened an account in the bank as trustee, and in his annual reports to the court merely recited that the trust fund was invested with his own funds. His trustee in bankruptcy, claiming that no trust was ever created, sued to recover certain securities pledged to E's surety on the trustee's bond. Held, by these transactions E became trustee of the trust. In re Wittwer's Estate, 216 Wis. 432, 257 N. W. 626 (1934).

Recommended Citation

TRUSTS-EXECUTORS AS TRUSTEES-EXISTENCE OF A RES SUFFICIENT TO CONSTITUTE A TRUST, 34 Mich. L. Rev. 584 (1936).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol34/iss4/24