PART I | 1. This Act may be cited as the Trustees Act. |
2.—(1) This Act, except where otherwise expressly provided, shall apply to trusts including, so far as this Act applies thereto, executorships and administratorships constituted or created either before, on or after 1st September 1929.| (2) The powers conferred by this Act on trustees are in addition to the powers conferred by the instrument, if any, creating the trust, but those powers, unless otherwise stated, apply if and so far only as a contrary intention is not expressed in the instrument, if any, creating the trust, and have effect subject to the terms of that instrument. |
| (3) This Act shall not affect the legality or validity of anything done before 1st September 1929, except as otherwise expressly provided. |
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3. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires —“approved company” means a company —| (a) | incorporated in Singapore and which has a place of business in Singapore; | | (b) | having as its sole or primary object the promotion of home ownership by advancing for the purchase of lands and buildings sums of money, repayable by instalments of principal and interest over a fixed period of years, not exceeding at any time the valuation or such lands and buildings made by an approved valuer; and | | (c) | approved by the Minister by notification in the Gazette for the purpose of receiving loans from trustees in accordance with section 4(1)(e); |
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| “approved valuer” means a licensed surveyor or appraiser and includes any other person approved by the Minister; |
| “authorised investments” means investments authorised by the instrument, if any, creating the trust for the investment of money subject to the trust, or by law; |
| “authorised unit trust scheme” means any unit trust scheme which has fulfilled to the satisfaction of the Minister the conditions contained in section 86 and which has been declared by an order of the Minister for the time being in force to be an authorised unit trust scheme for the purposes of this Act; |
| “contingent right”, as applied to land, includes a contingent or executory interest, a possibility coupled with an interest, whether the object of the gift or limitation of the interest or possibility is or is not ascertained, also a right of entry, whether immediate or future, and whether vested or contingent; |
| “convey” and “conveyance”, as applied to any person, include the execution by that person of every necessary or suitable assurance (including an assent) for conveying, assigning, appointing, surrendering, or otherwise transferring or disposing of land whereof he is seised or possessed, or wherein he is entitled to a contingent right, either for his whole estate or for any less estate, together with the performance of all formalities required by law for the validity of the conveyance; |
| “court” means the High Court; |
| “debentures” includes debenture stock, loan stock, bonds, notes and any other document which creates or acknowledges a debt, whether constituting a charge on assets or not; |
| “instrument” includes a written law; |
| “land” includes land of any tenure, and mines and minerals, whether or not severed from the surface, buildings or parts of buildings, whether the division is horizontal, vertical or made in any other way, and other corporeal hereditaments; also a rent and other incorporeal hereditaments, and an easement, right, privilege or benefit in, over or derived from land, or an undivided share in land; and in this definition “mines and minerals” include any stratum or seam of minerals or substances in or under any land, and powers of working and getting the same, and an undivided share thereof; |
| “mentally disordered person” means any person found by due course of law to be of unsound mind and incapable of managing himself or his affairs; |
| “mortgage”, “mortgagee” and “mortgagor” include “charge”, “chargee” and “chargor” respectively, and further include and relate to every estate and interest regarded in equity as merely a security for money, and every person deriving title under the original mortgagee; |
| “pay” and “payment”, as applied in relation to stocks and securities and in connection with the expression “into court”, include the deposit or transfer of the same in or into court; |
| “personal representative” means the executor, original or by representation, or administrator for the time being of a deceased person; |
| “person of unsound mind” means any person, not a minor, who not having been found to be a mentally disordered person is incapable from infirmity of mind of managing his own affairs; |
| “possession” includes receipt of rents and profits or the right to receive the same, if any; “income” includes rents and profits; and “possessed” applies to receipt of income of and to any vested estate less than a life interest in possession or in expectancy in any land; |
| “property” includes movable and immovable property, and any estate, share and interest in any property, movable or immovable, and any debt, and any thing in action, and any other right or interest, whether in possession or not; |
| “rights” includes estates and interests; |
| “sale” includes an exchange; |
| “securities” includes debentures, stocks, funds and shares; and so far as relates to payments into court has the same meaning as in the written laws relating to funds in court; and “securities payable to bearer” includes securities transferable by delivery or by delivery and endorsement; |
| “solicitor” means an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court; |
| “stock” includes fully paid-up shares, and, so far as relates to vesting orders made by the court under this Act, includes any fund, annuity or security transferable in books kept by any corporation, company or society, or by instrument of transfer either alone or accompanied by other formalities, and any share or interest therein; |
| “transfer”, in relation to stock or securities, includes the performance and execution of every deed, power of attorney, act, and thing on the part of the transferor to effect and complete the title in the transferee; |
| “trust” does not include the duties incident to an estate conveyed by way of mortgage, but with this exception “trust” and “trustee” extend to implied and constructive trusts, and to cases where the trustee has a beneficial interest in the trust property, and to the duties incident to the office of a personal representative, and “trustee” where the context admits includes a personal representative, and “new trustee” includes an additional trustee; |
| “trust corporation” means the Public Trustee or a corporation either appointed by the court in any particular case to be a trustee, or registered as a trust company under the Trust Companies Act [Cap. 336]; |
| “trust for sale”, in relation to land, means an immediate binding trust for sale, whether or not exercisable at the request or with the consent of any person, and with or without power at discretion to postpone the sale; “trustees for sale” means the persons (including a personal representative) holding land on trust for sale; |
| “unit trust scheme” means any arrangements made for the purpose, or having the effect, of providing for persons having funds available for investment, facilities for the participation by them, as beneficiaries under a trust, in profits or income arising from the acquisition, holding, management or disposal of any property whatsoever; |
| “unit”, in relation to a unit trust scheme, means a right or interest (whether described as a unit, as a sub-unit or otherwise) which may be acquired under the scheme. [8/78] |
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