A testator gave £12,000 in a codicil to five people on trust, saying they should invest using their discretion and ‘to apply the income.... for the purposes indicated by me to them.’ Four were told the general objects, and the fifth got detailed instructions.
The residuary legatees claimed that any trust was invalid, because parol evidence was inadmissible to establish the testator’s purposes.
The House of Lords held that the secret trust was valid, because the details were laid out around the same time as the execution of the codicil to the will.
[1] This principle is easily understood and may be also stated by saying that he cannot defraud beneficiaries for whom he has consented to act by keeping the money for himself.
a testator cannot reserve to himself a power of making future unwitnessed dispositions by merely naming a trustee and leaving the purposes of the trust to be supplied afterwards, nor can a legatee give testamentary validity to an unexecuted codicil by accepting an indefinite trust, never communicated in the testator’s lifetime: Johnson v Ball, Re Boyes, Re Hetley.