“Second, to ignore or conflate the separate roles of trustee and beneficiary would be contrary to the fundamental nature of a trust and would render the trust unworkable.
A trust is a form of property holding. It is not a legal entity or person. A trust does not hold title to property nor can it. It is the trustee who holds legal title to the trust property.
A trust is also a type of relationship, namely, the fiduciary relationship that exists between trustee and beneficiary. The foundation of the trust relationship is the separation of roles between the trustee and beneficiary with the trustee being the legal owner of the trust property and the beneficiary being the equitable owner of the trust property. The trustee holds legal title to the trust property so that it can manage, invest and dispose of the trust property solely for the benefit of the beneficiaries. A trust can only exist when there is a separation between legal ownership in the trustee and equitable ownership in the beneficiaries.
If the court were to ignore or conflate the separate entities, it would destroy the foundation of the trust relationship. Put another way, absent the separate entities, there is no trust relationship and, therefore, no trust. That is not the case when the corporate veil is pierced. In that situation, the corporation as a separate legal entity remains — it is simply that the court can look through the veil, in very limited circumstances, to attribute ownership to the corporation’s alter ego.”