The use of a “discretionary trust” that grants the trustee with the absolute discretion to determine when and if a distribution is made to a beneficiary, and in what amount, is a fairly common estate planning tool. If you are a beneficiary of a trust which provides the trustee with such broad discretion you may question whether there is anything that you can do prior to the final distribution to question the discretionary decisions that have been made by a trustee, and whether there are circumstances in which the court will intervene to overturn a trustee’s discretionary decision. The short answer is that while the court is generally reluctant to interfere with a trustee’s discretionary decisions, there are certain limited circumstances in which they will intervene and overturn a trustee’s decision.
The leading decision in Ontario concerning when the court will interfere with a trustee’s discretion is Fox v. Fox Estate. In considering when the court may interfere with a trustee’s discretion, the Court of Appeal provides the following commentary:
“The entire question of the degree of control which the courts can and should exercise over a trustee who holds an absolute discretion is filled with difficulty. The leading case, or at least the case to which reference is almost always made, is Gisborne v. Gisborne (1877), 2 App. Cas. 300 (H.L.). It stands for the proposition that so long as there is no ‘mala fides’ on the part of a trustee the exercise of an absolute discretion is to be without any check or control by the courts.” [emphasis added]
Fox v. Fox Estate cites to the English authority of Gisborne v. Gisborne for the proposition that, so long as there is no “mala fides” on the part of the trustees in exercising their discretion, the court will not interfere with a trustee’s discretion. In Gisborne v. Gisborne, Lord Cairns provides the following commentary with respect to when the court may interfere with any discretionary decision undertaken by a trustee:
“My Lords, larger words than those, it appears to me, it would be impossible to introduce into a will. The trustees are not merely to have discretion, but they are to have “uncontrollable”, that is, uncontrolled, “authority”. Their discretion and authority, always supposing that there is not mala fides with regard to its exercise, is to be without any check or control from any superior tribunal.” [emphasis added]
Simply put, the court will generally not interfere with a trustee’s discretionary decisions unless they were exercised with “mala fides“. “Mala fides” roughly translates as “bad faith”, such that the principle from Gisborne v. Gisborne can be summarized as providing that so long as there is no “bad faith” on the part of the trustee in making a discretionary decision the court will not interfere with such a decision.
Thank you for reading.