Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Court blesses Public Trustee v Cooper category 2 momentous appointment of farm to beneficiary under discretionary will trusts - guidance on valuation and disclosure (Folds Farm Trustees v Cutts)

Published on: 02 February 2024

Published by a LexisNexis Private Client expert

Legal News

Article summary

Folds Farm Trustees Ltd and another company v Cutts and others [2024] EWHC 12 (Ch) What are the practical implications of this case?

This claim illustrates trustees seeking the court’s approval for a decision in category 2 of Public Trustee v Cooper [2001] WTLR 901 (not reported by LexisNexis®UK), on the basis that the step was considered ‘particularly momentous’. There was no meaningful uncertainty about the extent of the trustees’ powers, and they had already determined how they intended to use them. Points of practical note for practitioners included:

At a directions hearing, the court permitted reliance on updated expert evidence and, unusually, ordered the trustees’ witnesses (their directors) to attend the final hearing for cross-examination.
At the final hearing, the Master observed, in the context of valuing real property, that appointments out of assets held on discretionary trusts are fundamentally different from cases involving absolute vested interests in capital. In the latter, testing the open market and securing the best price reasonably obtainable is required (see Killearn v Killearn [2011] EWHC 3775 (Ch)).
The Master also concluded that although the trustees had...

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