a thesis - Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

INVALIDATING CAUSES. 75
CHAPTER XI.—INVALIDATING CAUSES.
No trust is enforceable if its creation has been induced
by fraud, duress, undue influence or mistake, or if it is
created for a fraudulent purpose or any purpose forbidden
by law.
A trust, like a sale, gift, mortgage or contract, is liable to be
invalidated by fraud, duress, undue influence, mistake or illegality.
The detailed consideration of these matters does not, strictly
speaking, form part of the law of trusts, but there are certain
instances in which they have a special importance in that branch
of law.
FRAUD.
" Fraud vitiates everything," and if a party has been induced
to enter into a transaction by the fraud of another the transaction
is void. There seem to be but few reported decisions in which a
trust has been set aside on this ground as distinct from the particular
species of fraud known as undue influence, but in the case
of Evans v. Carrington (1860, 2 D. F. & J. 481), where a wife had
fraudulently induced her husband to execute a separation deed
which constituted a trust in her favour, the deed was set aside on
the husband's application. Where, however, the trust has been
created for valuable consideration, in order to obtain relief there
must be restitutio in integrutn. If, therefore, the trust is contained
in an ante-nuptial settlement, being founded on a valuable consideration
which cannot be restored, it cannot be set aside even though it
was induced by fraudulent misrepresentation. In Johnston v. Johnston
(1884,53 L. J. Ch. 1014), the action was brought by a husband
to set aside an ante-nuptial settlement which he had made on his
wife, who had falsely asserted that she had obtained a divorce from
her first husband by reason of his adultery and cruelty, and that
she had not cohabited with her second husband before her marriage
with him. As a matter of fact, however, the wife had been divorced
by her first husband by reason of her adultery with her second