Send us a text message with feedback

Who should I trust? If your answer is no one, the world would be a more difficult and expensive place. Wherever someone does something on your behalf you might have to employ someone else to watch over them, and then someone else to watch over the someone else etc etc.

Over the centuries, equity law has picked out certain kinds of relationships where there is an imbalance of power or knowledge and called them fiduciary relationships. The "trust" is a prime example. A fiduciary has a duty of loyalty, of not taking an undisclosed benefit from the relationship, and of doing everything they can on the beneficiary's behalf.

This is quite different from the normal situation in a market, where the rule is "caveat emptor": let the buyer beware.

Fiduciary law versus contract law reflects the balance in life between being fair to others and letting others look after themselves: a balance that is forever changing in the law.

In an exciting climax to the episode, the two Steves debate how you pronounce "fiduciary".

For the transcript of this episode and further reading, visit https://lawincontext.com.au/who-ya-gonna-trust/

For more information about your hosts and the Law in Context podcast series visit our website at https://lawincontext.com.au