Despite initial fears that it would allow tax planners another way to hide funds and create a back-and-forth fight between the Chancery Division and Parliament, the Act was met with general approval.

Prior to the 1950s, the courts commonly accepted that they could approve a "compromise" agreement where there was a dispute over the precise meaning of words in a trust document.

[3] In January 1957 the Lord Chancellor asked the Law Reform Committee "to consider whether any alteration is desirable in the powers of the court to sanction a variation in the trusts of a settlement in the interests of beneficiaries under disability and unborn persons, with particular reference to the decision in Chapman v. Chapman", and a report was presented to Parliament in November of that year.

[4] A draft bill was drawn up and introduced by Petre Crowder, the Member of Parliament for Ruislip-Northwood; it received its second reading in the House of Lords on 12 June 1958,[5] and was given royal assent on 23 July 1958.

[9] The wide scope of the act was quantified in Re Steed's Will Trusts, where the Court of Appeal ruled that the word "arrangement" was "deliberately used in the widest possible senses so as to cover any proposal which any person may put forward for varying or revoking the trusts", essentially allowing the courts the right to make any alteration whatsoever.

[14] While some critics feared that granting the courts unlimited jurisdiction would create "a most undignified game of chess between the Chancery Division and the legislature", and that it allowed tax planners another way to hide funds, the Act received general approval at the time.