Is a pure trust a person at common law?
No. Sorry. It is not.

The only way to create a legal person at common law is to have sexual relations (Clinton definition) between pre-exisiting persons of differential gender.

OK, that was a little smug. A trust is not a person; it is a relationship between and among the settlor, the trustee, the beneficary(ies), and the property held in trust. For the same reason that a marriage is not a legal person, neither is a trust. If a married woman backs into your car in the parking lot, could you sue something called "The Marriage of Dick and Jane?" No. You would sue Dick and Jane as actual humans. Procedurally the trustee has standing to intiate or defend against suits. Juridical persons, on the other hand, such as corporations, initiate and defend against suits in their own person, not through the president or the board of directors.

Until the Statute of Uses of 1570, a transfer of property from A to B for the use of C would result in legal title resting in (or "executed" into) the hands of C. Thus there could not be a relationship that even appeared to be a separate person at "real" common law (i.e., before the passage of what we Americans call a "common-law statute" -- which is not an oxymoron).

Be really suspicious of any pure-trust schemes that turn on the trust's being an actual juridical person, although I have to admit that the above discussion is more subtle than 9 out of 10 lawyers in the U.S. (or even the u.S.) would understand.

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