Definition
In legal usage, "bare" functions primarily as a modifier meaning naked, unaccompanied, or stripped of attendant rights, duties, or qualifications. It signals a reduced or minimal form of a legal concept — something existing in its most skeletal state, without the incidents that ordinarily accompany it.
1. As applied to trusts: A bare trust (also called a naked trust) is one in which the trustee holds legal title to property but has no active duties to perform — or whose only remaining duty is to convey the property to the beneficiary. The trustee is a legal placeholder; equity looks through the arrangement to the beneficiary as the true owner. The concept is closely linked to the doctrine of resulting trusts and passive trusts.
2. As applied to legal positions generally: "Bare" modifies a term to indicate that only the technical legal form survives, without substantive content. A bare license, for example, is a permission that confers no interest in land and is revocable at will. A bare possibility is a contingency so remote as to be legally weightless — it cannot be conveyed or devised at common law.
3. As applied to authority or power: A bare power is one granted without any accompanying interest in the subject matter. Contrast with a power coupled with an interest, which survives the death of the grantor and cannot be revoked.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Without covering; naked; minimal; also used colloquially as an intensifier ("very") or in slang contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Without clothes or covering; naked; plain; unadorned; exposed to view; meager.
The common meaning tracks the legal meaning closely at the level of metaphor — both convey absence, nakedness, or reduction to essentials. The gap is specificity: in law, "bare" is a term of art that signals a precise legal consequence (no active duties, no coupled interest, no enforceable position), not merely a descriptive adjective. A reader relying on the ordinary sense will understand the flavor but miss the doctrine.
Common Confusion
Bare vs. Naked: The two terms are used interchangeably in many historical sources (Anderson's Dictionary of Law simply cross-references NAKED). In modern usage, "bare trust" and "naked trust" refer to the same concept. However, "naked" appears more frequently in older equity texts and in some civilian-influenced jurisdictions, while "bare" dominates in English trust law. Researchers should search both terms when working across historical corpora or jurisdictions.
Bare License vs. Bare Easement: A bare license is a personal, revocable permission with no property interest attached. It should not be confused with an easement, which is an interest in land and survives transfer. The distinction matters significantly in land law and in cases involving implied rights of way.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Bare Trust: Trustee holds legal title with no active duties; beneficiary is treated as absolute owner for most purposes, including tax treatment in many jurisdictions.
Bare License: A permission to enter or use land, revocable at will, conferring no proprietary interest.
Bare Power: Authority to act with respect to property in which the holder has no interest; revocable and extinguished by death of the grantor absent statutory modification.
Bare Possibility: A contingency too remote to constitute a legal interest; incapable of assignment or devise at common law.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "bare" in historical legal sources is almost always load-bearing. When you encounter it modifying a legal concept — trust, power, license, possibility — it signals a specific doctrinal reduction, not mere emphasis. Missing that signal can lead researchers to misclassify instruments, misjudge the extent of a trustee's duties, or overlook the revocability of a permission.
In equity and trust law materials, the bare/active trust distinction is a gateway issue: it determines whether the trustee can be compelled to convey immediately, whether the beneficiary can direct dealings with the property, and (in modern contexts) how the arrangement is taxed. Bouvier's formulation — a trustee "compellable in equity to convey the estate to them or by their direction" — captures the Saunders v. Vautier principle that underlies much of Anglo-American trust law, though Bouvier does not cite it by name.
In property law research, "bare possibility" connects to the historical rules governing future interests and the numerus clausus of transferable property rights. Early American cases frequently turn on whether a contingency rose above a bare possibility to a "possibility coupled with an interest," which was alienable. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century land law materials will encounter this distinction repeatedly.
The cross-reference between "bare" and "naked" in historical dictionaries is a practical research note: indexing and headnotes in older reporters and digests are inconsistent, and a search limited to one term will miss authorities that use the other.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the more substantive source here. His definition leads with the bare trust and correctly identifies the two situations that produce it: a trust where no duties were ever attached, and a trust where duties once existed but the time for conveyance has arrived. This is accurate doctrine and aligns with equity treatises of the period. Anderson's entry adds nothing substantive, pointing only to NAKED — which confirms the synonymy but offers no independent analysis.
Both sources treat "bare" as a modifier requiring a noun to complete its legal meaning. Neither attempts a freestanding definition, which reflects the word's function: it has no independent legal content, only relational content. This is worth noting for researchers who encounter "bare" in an unfamiliar compound — the doctrinal weight sits in the noun being modified, and "bare" tells you something has been stripped away from that noun's ordinary legal complement.
Neither Bouvier nor Anderson addresses bare licenses or bare powers explicitly under this entry, meaning researchers cannot rely on the dictionaries' treatment of "bare" as comprehensive. Cross-referencing under POWER, LICENSE, POSSIBILITY, and TRUST will be necessary.
Jurisdictional Note
The bare trust concept is most developed in English and Commonwealth jurisdictions. In the United States, the functional equivalent is often a resulting trust or a dry trust, and statutory modifications (including the Statute of Uses and its American descendants) have affected whether bare trusts can exist at law or only in equity. Tax treatment of bare trusts varies significantly between the UK and US frameworks.