Equity’s maxims have many jurisprudential functions, one critical function being to sinew the equitable principles that regulate the law of trusts

Equity’s maxims have many jurisprudential functions, one critical function being to sinew the equitable principles that regulate the law of trusts. A court that is saddled with sorting out the rights, duties and obligations of the parties to a particular trust relationship who fails to appreciate this sinewing function risks crafting a decision that is doctrinally incomplete at best, incoherent at worst. Consider the Ohio case of Morris v. Mathers, 2024 WL 3495771, 2024-Ohio-2774. A trustee had expended personal funds to maintain and improve the trust estate. The trustee sought to be reimbursed. A beneficiary objected due to the absence of a formal written repayment agreement. The trustee quite rightly prevailed. “We find nothing in the trust language or statutory requirements that require…[the trustee before advancing his own funds ]…to obtain written consent or to have an agreement in writing…” Yes, but the analysis is incomplete. Unaddressed in the decision is the relevant equity doctrine extrinsic to the terms of the trust and Ohio’s version of the Uniform Trust Code that affirmatively affords and supports the trustee’s right to be reimbursed. The external rationale is the trustee’s inherent equitable right of reimbursement. See §3.5.2.3 of Loring and Rounds: A Trustee’s Handbook (2024), the relevant parts of which section are reproduced in the appendix below. A critical complement to that rationale is the maxim that equity looks to the substance of a matter, not to how it is packaged. Substance or intent over form, in other words. Recall that the trust relationship first and foremost is an invention of, and to this day is a ward of, equity. The substance-over-form maxim also has been known to save an exercise of a power of appointment that is defective only in form, or to thwart a trustee’s attempt, via the formalistic employment of a straw, to end-run equity’s self-dealing proscriptions. See §8.12 of the Handbook, which considers 15 equity maxims of general applicability that also serve as sinews of trust jurisprudence. How is it, then, that the courts are coming to “miss the maxims” in fiduciary litigation? That mandatory formal instruction in equity doctrine is now a thing of the past in most if not all U.S. schools is mainly to blame. Also, that the drafters of the Uniform Trust Code sensibly elected not to codify, partially codify, or otherwise mess with equity-maxim jurisprudence has, however, perversely rendered, as a practical matter, this still vital corner of the Anglo-American legal tradition for all intents and purposes invisible.