Hiroyuki Watanabe (Waseda University) & Nicolas Malumian (University of Buenos Aires) recently published Trust in Civil Law Countries: A World Guide to Civil Law Jurisdictions with Trust Regimes and an Analysis of Key Definitions and Concepts, 2026. The article shall be in Trusts & Trustees, Vol.32, Issue 10. Provided below is the Abstract:
Common Law jurists often assume that trusts do not exist within the Civil Law, or that they are fundamentally different from their Common Law counterpart. However, following more than a century of incorporating trust regimes into Civil Law (with nearly thirty countries having enacted such legislation) it follows that a distinct Civil Law trust exists, sharing far more common ground with the Common Law trust than a first glance might suggest. This article analyzes the definition of trust as a separate fund and the concept of trust ownership, concluding that there are no fundamental differences with the core concept of the trust in the Common Law.