How can I form a trust under common law
If you live in Louisiana or Puerto Rico, which have never had a common-law tradition, you can create a trust under specific statutory inclusions of trust law (an Anglo-American legal concept) onto the civil law of property. Absent such a statute you cannot form a common-law trust unless you can justify the use of the common-law of trusts of some particular jurisdiction on the specific facts of your situation. Some states, like Alaska, have statutory trust law that is easy for non-residence to "export" (similarly to perceived favorable corporate law of, say, Deleware of Nevada), but obviously this is not what the pure-trust community is talking about.

If you live in a jurisdcition that has adopted the pre-exisiting common law in its state constitution or, as a territory, have common law proscribed by the Congress under Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution, then perhaps you can set up a common-law trust that is not governed by statute.

First, however, you must make sure that your state has no trust code. If your state has a trust code, then the perceived magic of non-statutory trusts evaporates into thin air. All (or almost all) states have trust codes nowadays. Check with a lawyer (not a webmaster) to see if your state has a trust code. If your state has a trust code, you cannot form a common-law trust unless you can justify the use of the common-law of trusts of some particular jurisdiction on the specific facts of your situation. The phrase, "particular jurisdiction" in the last sentence is specifically designed to eliminate imaginary realms such as the united States.

It is perhaps true that you can have a trust established under another jursdiction if the trustee is domiciled there. The same problem arises: Where can you find a trustee where there is common law but no trust code? The Isle of Man has a trust code...in case you were looking at the website that pushes the Isle of Man as the location for your trust.

Let's assume that State X has common law, but no trust code. You do not live in State X, nor does your brother-in-law, whom you want to name as trustee. Can you make X law apply by simply stating that you want the law of X law to govern this transaction?

No. Sorry. You can't.

You cannot buy a beer on Sunday morning in Jackson, Mississippi by agreeing with the clerk to apply Nevada law to the transaction. If you are arrested for selling mariajuana, it is no effective defense to argue that, as a precondition to sale, you and all your prospective customers agreed to follow Dutch law. No pure-trust webmaster has satisfactorily explained these problems to me. Make you webmaster explain it to you before you give him any money or buy any "educational" material from him/her/it. This is the same legal proposition (on different facts) that they are trying to sell you on.

As an aside, note that pure trust promoters like to operate out of self-procaimed pure trusts themselves. Remeber what they say about asset protection and how you can avoid creditors and think about if you would like to track down one of these operators in court.

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