In this episode of Trusts Talk, Mark Bennett and Adam Hofri-Winogradow are joined by Felix Chang, the Robert J. Watkins/Procter & Gamble Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, to discuss his chapter, "Economic Analysis of Trust Law," in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws, co-edited by Adam and Mark with Lusina Ho and Richard Nolan. Felix traces an arc from microeconomic to macroeconomic analysis of trusts, from John Langbein's contractarian account and Robert Sitkoff's agency costs theory, through to work treating the trust as an input into the wider economy and a vehicle for entrenching wealth inequality across generations. The conversation ranges across asset protection trusts and settlor-retained powers, the asymmetry between contractual and tort creditors, the long-running contract-versus-property debate, and how American legal education folds trusts into estate planning. Felix also reflects on his path into trusts and estates scholarship, and on open questions at the intersection of trusts, race, and public fiduciary duty. References Felix B. Chang's Selected Relevant Work

• Felix B. Chang, "Economic Analysis of Trust Law," in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws (Oxford University Press).
• Felix B. Chang, "Asymmetries in the Generation and Transmission of Wealth" (2018) 79 Ohio State LJ 73.
• Felix B. Chang, "How Should Inheritance Law Remediate Inequality?" (2022) 97 Washington LR 61.
• Felix B. Chang and Lusina Ho, "Intestacy and Inequality under China's Revised Succession Law" (2023) 72 American Journal of Comparative Law.

Other Scholarship mentioned

• John H. Langbein, "The Contractarian Basis of the Law of Trusts" (1995) 105 Yale LJ 625.
• Melanie B. Leslie, "Trusting Trustees: Fiduciary Duties and the Limits of Default Rules" (2005) 94 Georgetown LJ 67.
• Robert H. Sitkoff, "An Agency Costs Theory of Trust Law" (2004) 89 Cornell LR 621.
• Henry Hansmann and Ugo Mattei, "The Functions of Trust Law: A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis" (1998) 73 NYU LR 434.
• Allison Anna Tait, "Inheriting Privilege" (2022) 106 Minnesota LR 1959.
• Allison Anna Tait, "The Law of High-Wealth Exceptionalism" (2020) 71 Alabama LR 981.
• Eric Kades, "Of Piketty and Perpetuities: Dynastic Wealth in the Twenty-First Century (And Beyond)" (2019) 60 Boston College LR 145.
• David Horton, "Wills Law on the Ground" (2015) 62 UCLA LR 1094.
• David Horton and Andrea Cann Chandrasekher, "Probate Lending" (2016) 126 Yale LJ 102.
• Reid Kress Weisbord, "Wills for Everyone: Helping Individuals Opt Out of Intestacy" (2012) 53 Boston College LR 877.
• Bridget J. Crawford and Anthony C. Infanti, "A Critical Research Agenda for Wills, Trusts, and Estates" (2014) 49 Real Property, Trust and Estate LJ 317.

Books

• John Chipman Gray, Restraints on the Alienation of Property (2 ed, Boston Book Company, 1895).
• Brooke Harrington, Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent (Harvard University Press, 2016).
• Brooke Harrington, Offshore: Stealth, Wealth, and the New Colonialism (W.W. Norton, 2024).
• Emilie Connolly, Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States (Princeton University Press).

In this episode of Trusts Talk, Mark Bennett and Adam Hofri are joined by Weiming Tan, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore and a contributing editor to the 35th edition of Snell's Equity, to discuss his recent Law Quarterly Review article on the account of profits in dishonest assistance. Weiming makes the case for his "equal rigour" principle: rather than asking whether a dishonest assistant counts as a fiduciary, which is the "status-centric" approach he critiques, he argues that equity's commitment to protecting the fiduciary relationship should extend the same remedial regime outward to those who dishonestly interfere with it. Drawing on Ian Jackman's idea of facilitative institutions, and navigating the split between the English Court of Appeal and the High Court of Australia, the conversation ranges across whether an account of profits should be available against dishonest assistants at all, what the causation test ought to be, the danger of treating fiduciary law as a convenient instrument for holding people to account, and the broader craft of doctrinal scholarship. Along the way Weiming reflects on his intellectual influences and his experience working on Snell's Equity.

References

Weiming Tan's work

• Weiming Tan, "Account of Profits in Dishonest Assistance, the 'Equal Rigour' Principle, and the Retreat from 'Status'" (2026) 142 LQR 58. SSRN
• Weiming Tan, "Bribes, Constructive Trusts, and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002" (2024) 140 LQR 356. SSRN

Cases

• Novoship (UK) Ltd v Nikitin / Mikhaylyuk [2014] EWCA Civ 908. link
• Ancient Order of Foresters in Victoria Friendly Society Ltd v Lifeplan Australia Friendly Society Ltd [2018] HCA 43. link
• Rukhadze v Recovery Partners GP Ltd [2025] UKSC 10. link
• Hopcraft v Close Brothers Ltd; Johnson v FirstRand Bank Ltd; Wrench v FirstRand Bank Ltd [2025] UKSC 33. link

For a full list of references see this link

In this episode of Trusts Talk, Mark Bennett and Adam Hofri-Winogradow interview Professor Katy Barnett of Melbourne Law School about Australian trust law, the role of protectors, appointors and guardians, and the fiduciary limits on trust powers.

Professor Barnett’s recent open-access article, “Protectors and guardians: observations from Australia”, provides a useful companion to the episode. For those with access, her paper “‘Pistols at dawn’ and the powers of trustees, appointors, and guardians: who comes trumps in a dispute over a family trust?” is also available.

The conversation begins with Australia’s unusually strong equity and trusts tradition. Barnett traces this tradition back to early colonial legal history, including the 1808 Rum Rebellion, and to the Burwood Estate litigation discussed in her and Lynne Barnett’s article, “‘Equity’s Darling’ and the Burwood Ejectment Case: A Turning Point in Colonial Australian Law”.

Barnett then turns to modern Australian trust practice. She explains how highly discretionary family trusts often use appointors, guardians or protectors to supervise corporate trustees and control succession within family wealth structures. These offices can be useful, but they can also produce intense control disputes. For recent Australian examples, see Staley v Hill Family Holdings Pty Ltd [2025] QCA 95, and Mercanti v Mercanti [2016] WASCA 206.

Barnett warns against assuming that the family patriarch, matriarch or dominant family figure is necessarily the best person to hold a control office. The episode discusses “battle of the deeds” scenarios, disputes over trustee removal powers - with reference to Cihan v Cihan [2022] NSWSC 538 and the need to specify whether particular powers are fiduciary, personal, constrained, or subject to procedural requirements.

The discussion then moves to fiduciary duties. Barnett distinguishes between the strict core of fiduciary law — especially the no-conflict and no-profit rules — and broader uses of fiduciary language that include duties of proper consideration, decision-making process and trustee deliberation.

The episode also connects protector powers to the problem of settlor control and illusory trusts. Key cases include New Zealand’s Clayton v Clayton [Vaughan Road Property Trust] [2016] NZSC 29, and the English High Court’s decision in JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank v Pugachev [2017] EWHC 2426 (Ch). (See also Mark's “The Illusory Trust Doctrine" )