Sham Trusts: A Comparative Study

The late economic crisis has given impetus to trusts settled in furtherance of unlawful purposes, namely, to put assets out of the reach of creditors. This scheme is particularly evident in the Italian scenario, where the courts have used the sham doctrine to tackle trusts in which settlors reserved to themselves massive powers, thereby turning trustees into marionettes in their hands. While doing so, the Italian courts have had a hard time to grasp the contours of sham. Meanwhile, in common law jurisdictions the concept of sham is going through a radical development, which undermines the canonical view based on parties’ intentions and properly focuses on trust functions under the circumstances. The intermeshing of legal orders might show that it is no longer possible to draw a clear dividing line between the civil law and common law approaches.