Equity & Trusts
11. Equitable Jurisdiction
Authors: Staff Legal Eagle
Firm / Chambers:
Last updated: 25 Jul 2015
- Equity has exclusive jurisdiction over the enforcement of trusts and fiduciary relationships.
- Fiduciary relationships arise where party A is in a position of trust and party B is reliant on party A to act in party B’s best interests.
- Fiduciary relationships are also presumed to give rise to a greater risk of undue influence.
- There are certain categories of relationship that are automatically determined to be fiduciary relationships and to require stronger enforcement of duties and obligations. These include the relationships of:
- trustee and beneficiary;
- lawyer and client;
- teacher and student;
- doctor and patient; and
- parent and child.
- Equity also supplements the civil law by intervening to provide a remedy where common law or statutory remedies are inadequate or unavailable. In this respect equity is a discretionary area of the law that allows it to be more flexible and responsive in the interests of justice.
- Equitable decisions are often much more complicated than the simple award of monetary damages usual in civil litigation as they tend to be tailored to the circumstances of the specific case.
- Judges acting in equity need to consider all the circumstances of the case including the conduct of the parties. They will look at the substance of what the parties are actually seeking to achieve rather than just deciding who has the better legal rights in the situation.
- New South Wales is the only location in Australia that has preserved a distinct Court of Equity with specialist judges and practitioners in the Equity Division of the Supreme Court of NSW.
- In all of the other states and territories equitable principles are applied by the common law courts. NSW judges in other courts will also apply equitable principles when appropriate.
- All Australian civil law judges will look to the common law and legislation first and if there is a gap or the existing law is inadequate then they may look to equity for a solution.
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