Can I form a trust under "general" common law?
No. Sorry. You can't.

The United States Supreme Court ruled way back in 1827 that all contracts incorporate within their very terms the positive law of the time and place where they are made. Ogden v. Saunders, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 213 (1827). The Court specifically rejected the dissenters' views that the power to contract arose from natural rights before the social compact. In other words, your trust has to be valid under the law of some actual place at the time you set it up. The common law of the mind simply won't cut it, folks. The purveyors of the pure-trust concept tell us that their trust is based on your God-given right to contract under common law. Which common law? Massachusettes common law? Alabama common law? Nebraska common law? Engllish common law? Austrailian common law? Manx common law? No. They cannot tell you this. But they must.

If a pure-trust person tells you that common law exists in the air, like oxygen, ask him if he's read Ogden v. Saunders. Pure-trust people love to quote old cases. I wonder why they do not quote this one.

Our friends at an outfit called Innovative Financial Consultants certainly haven't discussed the implications of Ogden v. Saunders on their website. Notice that they call common law "the law of the land." They don't even have any fine print that says, "Void in Louisiana."

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