If the trust is not properly constituted then I can’t see how it can receive a testamentary gift. The reason for the rules surrounding gifts to existing trusts is that otherwise the formal rules in the Wills Act 1837 would be circumvented –in which case intestacy beckons.
Is it permissible here to mention the Doctrine of the Missing Tenner? It involves two staple holes and the polite fiction that the trust’s initial capital was used (at some time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary) to pay the solicitors charge for storing the trust deed. As I said previously, in itself a thing of value; in the eyes of some, even of beauty.
Tim Gibbons