The concept of trust in Czech law

During the legislative works on a new Civil Code for the Czech Republic, it has been proposed that the concept of trust be introduced into Czech law, largely by transplanting the concept of fiducie contained in the Civil Code of Québec. The thesis, after introducing the principal concepts of trust as known around the world today, whether in common law jurisdictions, civil law jurisdictions or mixed jurisdictions, describes the principal commercial uses of trust in trust jurisdictions and analyses the possibilities of current Czech law to replicate the trust function not using the trust. The thesis argues that the classical civilist objections to the possibility to implant true trust into civil law jurisdictions are largely unfounded in respect of the Czech legal system. The thesis further performs a comparative assessment of the Czech Civil Code proposal. It is argued that the legal construct at hand in the proposal is actually not trust, but a mere trust-like arrangement, as it lacks one of the trust's most salient features -- transfer of the trust property by the settlor to the trustee. Apart from that, the thesis analyses specific provisions of the proposal and subjects them critique. Based on this analysis, it introduces a number of proposals for the enhancement of the proposed provisions.