• Rights of Beneficiaries

The Act vests a beneficiary with an actual or potential interest in the trust property.  The Trusts Act, in fact, stipulates that, subject to the terms of the trust, the beneficiary may, by instrument in writing, sell, charge, transfer or otherwise deal with his interest in any manner.  Furthermore, the Act provides that irrespective of the terms of the trust, where all the beneficiaries are in existence and have been ascertained and no one of them is interdict or a minor, they may require the trustee to terminate the trust and distribute the trust property among them. 

A beneficiary has a right to obtain from a trustee, committing or concurring in a breach of trust, the value of the loss to the trust property resulting from the breach and the profit, if any, which would have accrued to the trust if there had been no such breach.  If the trustees do not have sufficient funds to repay the loss, the beneficiaries may have to resort to tracing the trust property.  The Act stipulates that: 

"Without prejudice to the personal liability of a trustee, trust property which has been alienated or dealt with in breach of trust, or the property into which it has been converted, may be followed and recovered unless it is in the hands of a bona fide purchaser for value without notice of the breach of trust." 

A beneficiary may relieve or indemnify a trustee from liability arising from breach of trust; however, the Act lays down that nothing in the terms of a trust shall relieve a trustee from liability for breach of trust arising from his own fraud, wilful misconduct or gross negligence. 

The Act confers on a beneficiary the right to be provided by the trustees, within a reasonable time, with a copy of the accounts of the trust property. However, subject to the terms of the trust or to any order of the Court given for special reasons, the beneficiary is not entitled to see any other trust documents, particularly those relating to the deliberations as to the manner in which a trust power or discretion was exercised by the trustees.