The beginning
It is imagined by many that the history of trusts began in the feudal age period of England or at least became popular at that time. From a certain point of view this is true. But it also limits our understanding of what a trust is and how far reaching its purpose may reach into our lives. If we confine our search to only recent origins in a legal examination of trusts then we will fail to realize their modern and ancient historical value.
The concept of a trust is ancient and simple. Someone gives something to someone else for the benefit of another.
The letter of the trust.
We create a trust every time we mail a letter. You are the Grantor, the mailman is the trustee and the beneficiary is the one who receives the letter. The rules of the trust are subject to several things. The first rules are those found on the letter. They usually include an address to take the letter to and address to take the letter back to if you are unable to complete the terms of the trust and deliver the letter to the first address.
Also there are the terms and rules that the mailman is already subject to that come into strict operation as he takes on the trusteeship of delivering the letter. He is not really the trustee but a mere agent of the trustee and therefore he is subject to the rules and judgment of his employer who ultimately is the trustee.
Breach of trust
If someone interferes with the delivery of the letter the postman and most assuredly the Postal Department and its agents will defend the letter as if it were their own property. He will hunt down the thief as if the letter was his and stolen from him.
The trustee
The postman has possession of the letter, he holds it and guards and disperses it but he is not entitled to the use of it. The postman is such a good and faithful trustee he will not even return the letter to you even if you ask him unless he is unable to deliver the letter to its preordained destination. Some how the postman is holding a right to the letter yet never to the use of it as a part of his personal or real property. He has a legal right to hold that letter in his possession and guard it against all takers.
The Beneficiary
The beneficiary of the trust is the one to whom the letter is mailed. No one has a greater right to the letter than the one to whom it is addressed. The beneficiary may choose to have the letter or package delivered into someone else's care, or to be received on his behalf.
Dissolution of the trust
If the letter cannot be delivered the trust must be dissolved. The letter shall be returned. It may go back to the original grantor but only if his address is in the return address label which is apart of the original terms of the trust. If someone else's address is on the letter in the return section then that person will get the letter not the original grantor.
The Split
One of the most important characteristic phenomena of a trust is the splitting of the lawful title into two parts. There is the legal title on one hand and the equitable title on the other. The Grantor no longer has either for he has cast his letter upon the proverbial or at least metaphorical waters of the Postal Department. It is the postman or at least his boss that now holds what could be considered a legal title to the letter. He has no right to the beneficial use of the letter which involves reading it but he has all the responsibility of caring for it and delivering its value intact to the Beneficiary. The Beneficiary is the one holding the equitable title and therefore in law it is the Beneficiary that that the law considers to be the true owner of the property.
A conversion has taken place at the moment the letter was dropped into the slot of the mailbox. Until the letter actually passed into the possession of the Postal Department there was no trust despite what it said on the letter or the envelope or even the inclusion of the stamp. The Trustee signifies his acceptance of the trust at the point where he presses his mark on the stamp excepting and sealing his obligation to fulfill the terms of the trust.
Other splits
There are other examples of trusts that we participate in daily without ever thinking. When people buy a house or a car they know that it is very important that they get a clear legal title. But a legal title does not include the beneficial interest and is the antitheses of an equitable title which the law considers to be the true owner of the property.
A legal title is lawful but it is not a lawful title in the sense that it is not complete and actual title to the beneficial interest. Almost all the land in the world is held by a mere legal title by the individuals living here but some one else has been accumulating the equitable titles in trust.
The word legal "is derived from ligare (to bind), because it binds one to act."1 While the word 'Law' come from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "Just, right and fair".
For further reading on this and to gain a greater understanding of these concepts see. Law vs. Legal.
Wisdom of men
These ideas of divided title with ownership held in trust are not new but stem back to ancient times, even before the great flood. How is it that they, although written and readily available for study are almost void from common understanding?
Socrates offered this advice to philosopher kings in Plato's Republic, 'take all the children from their parents and rid the city of adults.' Modern schools are closed cities where only qualified facilitators are allowed. Divergentt or socially unacceptable opinions are checked at the door or suppressed all together. Socrates also warned that, "The young can't distinguish what is allegorical from what isn't, and the opinions they absorb at that age are hard to erase and apt to become unalterable".
We were all young once.
There are many other ideas that come down to us through the philosophers but may have not originated with them. Plato also describes a simple economic policy whereby no gold or silver shall be owned by any citizen not unlike the corvee slavery of Israel in Egypt. Socrates reasoned for a form of equality between the sexes. Women were to take part in the military, performing tasks that are suited for them. Some of the other liberating ideas included the wives and children should be held in common under the coverture of the state and women will be permitted to have sexual relations with whomever they choose. Men will have 'no private women, children, or servants. They would be cut off from families as heads of households. All these concepts are well implemented in today's society.
Communized
Land and property was to be communized and the citizens individual plots would be used for the good of the state who holds the right to the beneficial interest. In essence the individual does not own the property, the polis of the state is merely leaving it in his charge under a legal title. If the beneficial use of property is not paid annually to the state the one who has the legal title can be beat with impunity by the citizenry. Also, the Lawgiver must assign magistrates and appropriate laws to govern the enfranchised polis.
Today the plan of Socrates and Plato rules the earth. Americans tenaciously cling to the idea that they live in a free country. Freedom is not the same as affluence and affluence is an illusion when debt is pervasive. The farther men get from God the more comfort becomes the god of man.
The reason men have again returned to the bondage of Egypt and the rule of Rome is because they have turned away from the Kingdom of God and His ways. The lack knowledge of their own system and they are all but totally ignorant of God's system.
1 Corinthians 2:5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
City States
As man became civilized by the creation of city states he entered into social contracts that did make use of at least two conceptual legal structures that we will be dealing with here. One as we mentioned is Trusts and the other is Incorporation. Concerning corporations we will only give it the most general of definitions. A corporation is when two or more people gather together as one person under a preexisting authority. This precept is fundamental in all city states. Concerning Trusts all city states and corporations require that some substance of present value be included as a deposit into the corpus of the entity, Trust or Corporation.
In the city state one of the most common things of value deposited for the benefit of the Legal State as a bound unit was the people themselves, the subject citizenry. Also land and even the gold and silver in the individual family treasuries which were normally managed by the first born as the "priest" of the family. In a city state there was a great loss of personal freedom and wealth. There was always corruption and bureaucratic waste. Yet, the creation of city states created a need to belong to a city state for protection. Like the gangs of the inner city the youth often feel compelled to join one gang in order to find some protection from other gangs.
The first city state we find in biblical text is Enoch which was established by Cain.
Genesis 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
The sons of Noah also created many city states and their civil power reduced men to possessions held in trust. The leaders of the Civil power held their office as trustees of their kingdom. These positions shifted and the law of Patronus, the Father, became the operating center of activities.
Merchants of men
These merchants of men in Northern India were called Asuras, the mercantile caste. They built huge system of irrigation lakes but also used these civic projects to control the people through their dependence upon those who regulated the product of their common effort. Their was a group of people who opposed them and their subjugating systems of statutory labor and occasionally warred against their tyranny and control.
Amongst these men lived a wise and influential prince by the name of Brahma. He married his half sister named Sarai-Svati, Sarai or Princes of the Temple or Tower, and later married an Egyptian Princes as a concubine or second wife named Ghaggar. He also wrote one of the revealed books of sacred Hindu scripture, The Atharva Veda.
If you are well versed in scripture you should realize that Brahma was also the patriarch Abram. Abram and these Aryan people suddenly picked up and abandoned over twenty thousand villages and moved toward the west where they resettled the city State Ur. They left in there wake a destroyed agricultural empire that was recked by a series of floods and devastating earthquakes.
Joshua 24:2 And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, [even] Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.
The word [ynenk] Canaanite has often been translated that it meant merely the inhabitant of Canaan but the word actually means literally a merchant, trafficker or trader although later in Aramaic it came to mean zeal or zealot. That word comes down from antiquity to describe those who would become merchants of men, exercising authority over them and living by the sweat of other men's brow rather than there own labor. There is an old saying that, "In capitalism man exploits man: In socialism the process is reversed". The modern Canaanite might be a capitalist or a socialist. The key factor in being a Cannanite is the exploitation or use of another man whereby he is impoverished or oppressed.
Genesis 4:23-24 And Lamech said ... I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
From Cain to Lemech, Nimrod to Pharaoh and ancient Caesar to modern Caesar one question continues to arise.
"Are men the property of the state? Or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world?"2
Altars of Stone
Abram who separated himself from first Ur and then from the city state of Haran established by his Father, Terah, and named after his executed brother Haran. He later became Abraham after he refused to take even a shoelatchet of the spoils of the City State Sodom and was blessed by the righteous king of peace.
Genesis 14:23 That I will not [take] from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that [is] thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich:
Abraham expatriated and went it alone. Or did he? He was able to muster over 300 armed men and was often traveling with a large contingency of people. What was his system of Government? How did he manage to keep order and manage the daily ministration? The codification of law at Ur had replaced the ana ittishu which was the ancient equivalent of our modern "words and phrases" and was a part of an ancient system of wisdom for the preserving of the "Sumerian Family Laws."
Abraham had altars of uncut stones. Were these altars literal, metaphorical or a combination of both. In the law of the family the eldest son was usually the high priest in charge of the wealth of the family which included domestic servants and their families. He ministered to the needs of the family members with the contributed excess. The family was the key economic and social structure. But how did the community operate? The Hebrew word [hmgr] rigmah is translated council but it means an assembly of stones and is from the Hebrew word [Mgr] Regem which means friend.
Were these uncut stones representative of unregulated men chosen by the people but approved by Abraham? Were they a system of trusts where men would donate upon a living altar, giving to men they trusted to help bring the people together as an economic unit and a body politic to form an unfettered society under the perfect law of liberty?
Altars of Earth
Exodus 20:24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.
Moses was instructed not to make gods of silver and gold but an altar of earth. This was at the time the people attempted to make a walled in Tent City State with a golden calf as the central bank and depository of the peoples wealth. This was not the system God wanted men to live under. God wanted men to build alters of earth but what kind of earth. The word earth in the text above is translated from [hmda] 'adamah which is the same red clay from which Adam was made and is sometimes translated husbandman.
Again was this altar of earth metaphorical of an unregulated altar of men granted the sacrifices of the people in trust for the production of a unified society based on faith, hope, love, responsibility and liberty?
Tithingmen
Some 3,000 years ago Moses managing a society of about three million people was led to organize them by establishing captains of ten families.... The Levites had replaced the first born because of the sin of the people when called out to serve God. This system was not perfect but it was designed to bring people back to the family under God the Father. By the time Jesus arrived the people had done almost everything but what was to be the precept of God's plan. They did not trust in God or His plan but in instead they constituted their own system more in line with Rome and the merchants of men.
Acts 1:15... And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)...
These were the stones cut out without hands and established by Jesus Christ. They were not to exercise authority, one over the other but were living stones building the temple according to the design of the architect of the Kingdom, not one stone upon another but a foundation upon which the people may come together under the coverture of the house of the King.
Leviticus 25:10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout [all] the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
This Separate ekklesia, this Holy Church was designed to maintain an entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth where every man might be returned to his possession and restored to his family. This Holy Church in turn allowed the people to build an altar, create a trust, of earth sanctioned by the Holy Spirit.
Acts 6:3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.
For centuries the Kingdom of God was taught throughout the world and His system turned back Rome and the merchants of men. The two systems lived sometimes side by side. Conflict, jealousy and persecutions came and went until the beast in men's hearts became, by fornication and adultery, the powerful beast we see today controlling and holding the equitable title to all the possessions of men, their families and even their very souls. Liberty is no more pervasive in the land and all having gone under tribute.
In 600 AD the Anglo-Saxon form of government had something called a Tithingman who oversaw ten families composed of freemen, a Hundredman [or gerefa - in Saxon language, it became reeve] who oversaw ten Tithingmen, and an Eoldorman who was overseer a thousand families known as Shire. The key to these successful societies was that no person was responsible for communicating directly with more than 10 people. A tithing in English Law was formerly a district containing ten men with their families.
The Tithing men were often the center in resolving disputes. These were positions of trust and some times included donations of limited property to carry out the function and duties of his office. The same was true of Hundredmen and Eoldormen. Eventually the apathy of some people in their duty to justice and their neighbors in community placed the burden of peace keeper to much on the shoulders of these servants of the people. By 900 AD Alfred the Great began to combine the reeve, forming shires or counties, each shire led by a reeve eventually being called the shire-reeve or "keeper of his county".
One thousand years after the fall of Jerusalem to Titus and Rome, William the Bastard entered England and killed one of the claimants to the trusteeship of the Kingdom in Britain claiming that office. The Normans renamed the Tithingman and called him a Constable, from the Latin 'Comes Stabuli' meaning Count of the Stables or Master of the Horses.
This new King believed in top down ruler and even claimed a divine right of kings and was sanctioned by some form of Church. This kingdom and its successors did not return every man to his possession and every man to his family but instead declared that men were subject to the exercising authority of the king as if the people were no more that the horses in his royal stable.
Luke 22:25-26 And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.But ye [shall] not [be] so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
The original Tithingman was backed by those who were the individual of the community. He was chosen because of his honor and justice to coordinate the efforts of freemen. This combining of the reeves in power from the top down was a devolution of the system of God. Early Tithingmen were what we might identify as monks, often carrying a sword not to exercise authority but to prevent the wicked from doing the same. These holy men or separate men understood that each man must individually come before God working out their salvation with fear and trembling.
The Bastardization of the Kingdom
By 1085, William by executive ordered began a compilation of taxable land in a census known as the Domesday Book. The sheriff reeve became the officiating tax collector. This book was literally a list of all the land held by the king under an equitable title where the people only received a legal title.
By 1116 Henry the I codified the law like Ur centuries before. The king declared that he was "the fountainhead of justice". Like Rome he reserved to himself and his officials the power to punish, investigate and apprehend those that he and his house believed to be criminal. This was a top down system where men centralized the exercise of power over others. The money system became more centralized and eventually all the land and people fell under this burgeoning authority.
Also like Rome it was a common practice to either create disputes or step in to settle disputes whereby the guilty party would suffer the forfeiture of all his lands. The king would then dispose the land to those who will serve him but only with a legal title, retaining the equitable title to himself. A legal title is not a freehold, lawful or a fee simple title.
In the beginning these lands were actually owned by freeman with true lawful titles. They could see that hectare after hectare was entering the dominion of the Doomsday book. If they put their land in trust with another man it was considered protected. They could no longer loose the land in a dispute not having any more than a legal title to it. The Trustee was not the owner either so his actions would not loose the title either. The benefactor was often not yet born since it was popular to make ones heir the recipients of the beneficial interest.
Trusting in Riches
The remnants of the Holy Church established by Jesus Christ often provided the honorable trustee, a practice which was becoming increasingly popular under these Norman kings but was not unheard of in Britain prior to William. Unfortunately if the grantor and all his heirs died the Church was left with the land making the Church the holder of greater and greater wealth and therefore power. Many entered the Church for their love of wealth and comfort more than love of God. But probably more disastrous was the envying eye of religious leaders more distant who desired to extend the ruling power of their Church in England and throughout Europe and the world.
Reforming the Stones
During the 960's AD King Edgar began a process which he ironically called "Church Reform". The visible Church had already seemed to undergo a metamorphosis in the world that was making it appear as something other than what Jesus appointed. Any time the Church strayed from its original duties it breached the trust and lost the sanction of the Protector, the Holy Spirit. It might still call itself the Church but since it was not self Created nor its own Protector, but merely a trustee, it could loose its official standing and appear to remain in its office.
There were many forms that the Church's apostasy took but none more damning that to exercise authority like the princes of the gentiles. This was blatantly common in what has reported to be Church History but is really the record of usurpation by those who are anti Christ. It mattered little if it was those pretending to be His Holy Church who directly exercised authority or if they crowned other men to do their blood deeds it was still a violation of the prime directive of Jesus the King.
These crowned kings with their license for tyranny attacked any Church that did not accept the authority of the church that crowned them. This was called reform and it was a re forming of the Church in the Image of the Beast of Rome. These kings were applying the chisel often in the form of a sword, to the stones that had built the temple of God on earth. This process began hundreds of years before. Today there is little of what is called church that has any resemblance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of heaven seems for the most part anything but at hand.
The Use of Mortmain
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia the word Mortmain is from the French morte meyn meaning a dead-hand or "such a state of possession of land as makes it inalienable" 3 It is "the possession of land or tenements by any corporation"4or "where the use came ad manum mortuam, which was when it came to some corporation"5
MORTMAIN is also defined as "An unlawful alienation of lands, or tenements to any corporation, sole or aggregate, ecclesiastical or temporal. These purchases having been chiefly made by religious houses, in consequence of which lands became perpetually inherent in one dead hand, this has occasioned the general appellation of mortmain to be applied to such alienations."
"Mortmain is also employed to designate all prohibitory laws, which limit, restrain, or annul gifts, grants, or devises of lands and other corporeal hereditaments to charitable uses."6
Originally those freeman having a freehold title in land and no 'feudal' king were granting the equitable title in land into the hands of a trustee, often the Church, in a card game of intrigue in hopes that the King would not get what the law considered to be the true title to the land. Catholic Encyclopedia goes on to make an understatement with, "But there appears to have arisen a somewhat widespread repugnance on the part of landowners to hold land subject to the faith and homage which accorded with the law doctrines of the Norman feudists." If it seemed that land owner was doomed to loosing the lawful title to land anyway there was an assumed advantages to choosing who would get it. The Church seemed to be more benevolent than the King. The King on the other hand saw wealth slipping through his fingers and tax revenue being lost.
"The civil law reduces the unwilling freedman to his original slavery; but the laws of the Angloes judge once manumitted as ever after free."7
Perpetual Possession
Under Anglo-Saxon law a man's home was his castle but under Norman law a man's home was the kings. The King believed that other than the Church he was the only one who had a perpetual right to property. If the people had such a right then that would mean they were not subject to the King. The fact that a corporation is not to have the ability to own property in perpetuity is also part of the same arrogant erroneous logic of the King. The King is a corporation. He is a corporation sole with an aggregate of people in succession rather than one moment in time.
As was stated above a corporation is when two or more people gather together as one person under a preexisting authority. Some would add to that definition "having perpetual succession under an artificial form"8 Some would say that a trust is a form of corporation by association or construction of law.
The only claim a king has that a corporation cannot own property perpetually is because he may claim to be the preexisting authority under which these corporations began. Even the Catholic Church often claims its rights because of its earliest incorporation by the state of Rome.
"The Catholic Church, having been recognized 'since the time of the Emperor Constantine' in the countries which adopted the feudal system "as possessing a legal personality and the capacity to take and acquire property"9 and again according to the Catholic dictionary, "feudalism recognized not only the Church, but its religious communities, as spiritual corporations. Such a community has been thought to be appropriately described to be 'gens æterna eadem perpetuo permanens quasi in ea nemo uniquam moritur' (an everlasting body continuing perpetually the same as if in it no one may ever die). The communities might consist of men, each of whom was deemed, because of his vows, civilly dead. But to the communities themselves, viri religiosi, 'people of religion', gens de main morte, the law attributed a perpetual existence and perpetual ownership of property."
The Bible tells us in Leviticus 25:23 that The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land [is] mine; for ye [are] strangers and sojourners with me.
If a corporation is nothing more than two or more people gathered together as one person under a preexisting authority having perpetual succession, then Adam and Eve were the first corporation as husband and wife and Cain formed the second when he established the first city State. Under Adam's corporation God was the preexisting authority and admitted in the concept of the divine right of Kings. A Trust within a trust cannot stand against the terms of the original trust. The same can be said of any and all corporations. It is the originating authority that rules as god over an incorporation. With that reasoning in place no one could have perpetual ownership of land except God Himself.
There is an exception in Leviticus 25:34, But the field of the suburbs of their [the Levites]cities may not be sold; for it [is] their perpetual possession.
His Holy Church may be a corporation in this same rite since it was founded by King Jesus. His Holy Church was recognized by Rome by the message nailed to the cross and sealed in blood. His Holy Church like the Levites before them belong to Jesus Christ, the highest son of David, the promise of Abraham, the heir to the righteous kingdom of Peace, and the blessing of Noah, the perpetual descendent of Adam and Eve.
His Holy Church is the possession of Jesus a king of the Kingdom of God on earth which predates all others. His Holy Church can neither sue nor be sued nor does it appeal to any court or before any god other than Jesus Christ and God the Father. It is His servant, His corpus, His corporation, His body as His Bride under one form of government to receive, preserve and propagate His doctrines and ordinances. The Church as trustee of His Kingdom on earth may hold land in common in perpetual succession looking to the power of the Protector to sustain them. It may hold that land for His purposes which is to maintain and entrance, set the captive free, return every man his possession and every man his family. For His Holy Church is His perpetual possession.
1 Summa Theologica 1st of 2nd Part Treaties on Law Ques.90 of the Essence of Law. Thomas Aquinas
2 Cecil B. DeMille in "The Ten Commandments."
3 Wharton, "Law Lexicon", 10th ed., London, 1902.
4 Bouvier, "Law Dictionary", Boston, 1897.
5 Lord Bacon, "Reading on the Statute of Uses"
6 The 'Lectric Law Library's Lexicon
7 Libertinum ingratum leges civiles in pristinalm servitutem redigulnt; sed leges angiae semel manumissum semper liberum judicant. Co. Litt.137.
8 (Shelford, "A practical treatise on the Law of Mortmain, ∓mp;mp;c.", Philadelphia 1842,
9 Ponce vs. Roman Catholic Church, 210 United States Supreme Court Reports, 311