About the project

The Singapore Academy of Law’s Law Reform Committee recommended changes to the Trustees Act (Chapter 337, 1999 Revised Edition; now the 2005 Revised Edition):

• to introduce an objective standard of care that is applicable to a number of prescribed functions carried out by trustees;
• to permit trustees to employ nominees and custodians, who are in the business of providing such services, to hold trust property;
• to allow trustees to insure trust property in a wider set of circumstances and to pay the premiums out of capital as well as trust income; and
• to allow trustees to be remunerated for services rendered to the trust.

Project status: Completed

• The report was published on 31 March 2003.
• Parliament implemented some of the recommendations in the report through the the Trustees (Amendment) Act 2004 (No 45 of 2004), which was passed on 19 October 2004 and came into force on 15 December 2004.
• The report was cited in the following works:
  • Tey Tsun Hang, “Trust Protector” (2008) 20 Singapore Academy of Law Journal [Sing Acad LJ] 99 at page 131, paragraphs 94 and 95, footnotes 150, 152 and 153.
  • Chia Huai Yuan, “Trustee Exemption Clauses & the Modern-day Investment Trust” (2013) 31 Singapore Law Review [Sing L Rev] 199 at page 203, footnote 18; and at page 223, footnote 178.
  • Chia Huai Yuan, “Gross Negligence Once More? Trustee Exemption Clauses in the Privy Council: Spread Trustee Co Ltd v Sarah Ann Hutcheson [2011] UKPC 13” (2013) 31 Sing L Rev 343 at page 345, footnote 16.
  • Yip Man, “Trusts and Equity: Dreaming and Building a Singapore Equitable Jurisdiction” in Goh Yihan & Paul Tan (gen eds), Singapore Law: 50 Years in the Making (Singapore: Academy Publishing, 2015), 668 at page 708, paragraph 12.61, footnote 220.

Areas of law

◾ Trust law

Click on the image above to view the report

Last updated 10 June 2019