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Title
The myriad trust applications of equity's maxims have in no way been rendered
obsolete by the Uniform Trust Code.
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It is professionally unwise for one with only the UTC in hand to endeavor to navigate in the trust
space. Recall that the UTC is merely an aggregation of tweaks to fundamental equity
doctrine. The trust being a creature of equity, the UTC makes no effort even to define for its
purposes, let alone for any other purposes, what a trust actually is. The equitable remedy and the
various forms it can take in the trust context, both procedural and substantive, are the subject of
Chapter 7 of Loring and Rounds: A Trustee’s Handbook (2022). The focus of this posting,
however, is on equity's “maxims,” which have myriad trust applications that have not gone away
with the enactment of the UTC. In fact, few if any of the trust-related situations regulated by the
maxims are even addressed by the UTC. Here are the maxims that are particularly relevant to the
trust relationship:
• Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy.
• Equity follows the law.
• Where there is equal equity, the law shall prevail.
• Where the equities are equal, the first in time shall prevail: qui prior est tempore, potior est
jure.
• He who seeks equity must do equity.
• He who comes into equity must come with clean hands. [The public policy that underpins the
unclean-hands maxim is taken up in §5.5 of the Handbook].
• Delay defeats equities.
• Equality is equity.
• Equity looks to the intent (substance) rather than to the form.
• Equity looks on that as done which ought to be done.
• Equity imputes an intention to fulfill an obligation.
• Equity acts in personam.
• Equity will not aid a volunteer.
• Equity will not suffer a trust to fail for want of a trustee.
• Equity suffers not advantage to be taken of a penalty or forfeiture, where compensation can
be made.
For a collection of the trust applications of these maxims see the footnoting to the catalogue
of maxims in §8.12 of Loring and Rounds: A Trustee’s Handbook (2022), the relevant portion of
