This book assesses the conceptualization and legal response to the social problem of abuse of fiduciary authority in transnational context.

This book examines addresses a social problem that cuts across legal systems: abuse of authority in decision making. Whether within familial, political, or business relations, all individuals are vulnerable to another's abuse of authority to make decisions for them. This book is about how law may respond to this problem transnationally.

This edition grapples with the dynamic and complex fields of law that make up the modern law of international commerce, finance and trade.

This book contains the reflections of members of the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law comprising the proceedings of their meeting in Berlin in May 2000. In the present volume academicians dissect four topics: (1) Settlement of disputes in estate and trust matters through arbitration and alternative dispute resolution; (2) Major transnational legal issues (non-tax) in testamentary matters: the effect of the Hague convention on succession to the estates of deceased persons; (3) Responsibility of tax advisors: the borderline between optimal and abusive planning; and (4) Recent developments in offshore trusts from a common law and civil law viewpoint.

This book is concerned with the development of the trust idea in common law jurisdictions, whether mainland or offshore, and in civil law jurisdictions. While trusts are important for preserving family wealth and influence, over ninety per cent of the value of trust funds is found in commercial or financial trusts, about which little has been written. It is interest in the latter type of trust that is likely to lead to the development of the trust idea in European mainland jurisdictions, especially as the economic destinies of European jurisdictions become increasingly intertwined and as the Hague Convention on the Recognition of Trusts comes to be implemented. In this volume the work of leading trust scholars in Canada, England, the USA, Germany and Japan is brought together to explore key issues in trust law, until now not covered in any single resource: the full elasticity of the trust concept; the variety and significance of commercial or financial trusts; the scope for reforming trust law in various jurisdictions to make it more economically efficient in assisting in the preservation and generation of wealth; the potential for the development of a core trust concept in civil law jurisdictions as a special part of the law of obligations, without any need to create equitable proprietary interests in favour of beneficiaries. Modern International Developments in Trust Law will be of interest not only to academic trust lawyers and comparative lawyers, but to common law and civil law practitioners, whether interested in taking advantage of foreign trust laws, or in developing in their local jurisdictions new ideas obtained from foreign jurisdictions.