On The Establishiment Of Testametary Trust In China’s Inheritance Law

Originated in England, testamentary trust system was originally used to circumvent rigid regulations and legal defections of traditional inheritance system and later became an important tool of property inheritance and property management, which plays important functions in estate planning and wealth appreciation. With the development of China’s society and economy, and the proliferation of private wealth, the traditional inheritance system with its inherent defect in our current inheritance law such as statutory succession, intestate succession and bequeath not only can’t meet people’s diverse needs and personalized purposes for estate distribution and estate planning, but also cause a lot of succession disputes and inheritance issues. All of these situations urgently need testamentary trust system to solve, which has the instrumental value in compensating for defects in the Succession Law. Although Trust System has been introduced into China’s Trust Law since2001,"Testamentary Trust "was just mentioned in Article8and Article13which provide nothing but its establishment standards. The simple provisions lacking practical operability make it become a mere formality in practice. Actually the real testamentary trust system has never been established and applied in practice in our country for the lack of other related legal systems and supporting mechanisms, which hinder its proper function in the field of civil inheritance. Therefore, the reposition and reconstruct of the real testamentary trust system in our current legal framework has increasingly become a serious problem.In order to solve these practical difficulties and legal problems, and provide an effective solution for compensating for the deficiencies of the current Succession Law and improvement of the Trust System, in this article, I’ll attempt to mainline the unique features and systems values of testamentary trust, study its original motivations and legislative achievements at abroad, base on our country’s legislative situations and practical needs, and then put forward some concrete suggestions about improvement, reposition and establishment of the real testamentary trust in our Succession Law from the perspective of improvement and modification of the Succession System.