Anthony Grant
The courts used to permit trustees to have broad exemption clauses because without them it would be too hard to attract appropriate people to act as trustees.
But the freedom to write such broad clauses led to abuse and Parliament intervened to constrain the acts for which trustees could claim exemption.
The current New Zealand constraints are contained in s 40 of the Trusts Act 2019, which provides that:
Unlock this article and all PREMIUM content by subscribing to LawNews
Already a subscriber?
On a related note, there is recent Court of Appeal authority that a lawyer cannot “shelter” behind an indemnity provided by a client. Therefore, the question for me is who who would provide professional indemnity insurance for trustees if s131 and a separate personal indemnity “just in case” is ineffective? Beats me.