¶ 501
Overview
Purpose of the chapter. This chapter examines the Trusts Act, Cap. 202, as a whole. Later chapters take its parts in turn: creation and registration (see infra ch. 6), trustees (see infra ch. 7), beneficiaries and protective trusts (see infra ch. 8), protectors and reserved powers (see infra ch. 9), purpose and charitable trusts (see infra ch. 10), section 7 (see infra ch. 11) and variation, migration and termination (see infra ch. 12). Before those chapters can be read with confidence, the practitioner needs a map of the statute: where it came from, how its Parts fit together, which of its provisions apply to which trusts, how it has been amended and how it sits beside the other legislation of Belize. This chapter supplies that map.
The text used. The chapter works from the Revised Edition 2020 of the Substantive Laws of Belize, which shows the Act as at December 31, 2020 and consolidates the amendments made by Acts No. 9 of 2007 and No. 16 of 2013. Trusts Act, Cap. 202 (rev. ed. 2020), title page. It also works from the text of the Trusts (Amendment) Act, 2007, No. 9 of 2007, the Trusts (Amendment) Act, 2023, No. 40 of 2023, and the International Trusts Regulations, 2007, S.I. 68 of 2007, each as published. Where the revised edition departs from the amending Act it consolidates, the chapter says so (see infra ¶ 590.04). Section references are to the Act as amended in 2023 unless the text states otherwise.
The shape of the statute. The Act has eleven Parts, an inserted Part XA and two Schedules. Parts I to IX are a complete law of trusts: they define a trust, state when a trust is valid, fix its proper law, describe the roles of settlor, beneficiary, protector and trustee, state the trustee's duties and powers, and provide for termination, variation, breach of trust and the powers of the court. Part X and Part XA are a registration code, added in 2007 and 2013 and extended in 2023. Part XI holds the application, interpretation, commencement and repeal provisions. The Schedules list authorised trustee investments and the powers implied into trusts. The structure is set out in Table 5-1 (see infra ¶ 520.02).
The two halves of the Act. It is useful to read the Act as having two halves. The first half, from 1992, is a modern trust law of the kind adopted in the 1980s and 1990s by the offshore financial centres of the Commonwealth. It codifies, and in places changes, the English law of trusts received in Belize. The second half, from 2007 onward, is a regulatory overlay. It adds compulsory registration, trust agents, record-keeping duties, beneficial-ownership reporting and offences. The overlay was imposed on a statute drafted without it, and the joins show. Section 65B(7), which makes section 7 apply to an international trust only if the trust is registered, is the most important of those joins (see infra ¶ 560.07).
Section 7 in this chapter. Section 7 is the provision for which Belize trusts are best known. It directs the Belize court not to vary or set aside a Belize trust, or recognise any claim against the trust property under foreign law or a foreign order, in respect of the consequences of marriage, succession rights or "the claims of creditors in an insolvency." Trusts Act, Cap. 202, s. 7(6). Chapter 11 treats the section in full, and chapter 23 treats the meaning of insolvency in paragraph (c). This chapter places section 7 in the structure of the Act and shows how the definitions in section 67, the registration rule in section 65B(7) and the cross-references in section 7(7) bear on it (see infra ¶¶ 530.08, 560.07, 580.02).
Plan of the chapter. Paragraph 510 traces the enactment of the Act and its antecedents. Paragraph 520 describes its architecture and the rule in section 66 on which provisions apply to which trusts. Paragraphs 530 to 550 walk through Parts I to IX. Paragraph 560 explains the two registration codes. Paragraph 570 examines the 2023 amendments section by section. Paragraph 580 sets the Act beside the Law of Property Act, the repealed Trustee Act, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act 2025 and the other statutes it touches. Paragraph 590 deals with transitional provisions, the drafting points a reader of the revised edition should know, and a checklist for reviewing an existing Belize trust against the current Act.