Definition
An implied trust is a trust relationship that arises by operation of law rather than by express declaration. Where no written instrument or oral statement creates a trust, courts will recognize one when circumstances — particularly the conduct of the parties, the nature of a transaction, or the equitable demands of a situation — make it unjust to treat property as belonging outright to the person who holds legal title.
Implied trust is best understood as an umbrella term covering two distinct subtypes:
1. Resulting trust. A trust that arises when legal title to property is placed in one person while the beneficial interest was always intended, or must be presumed, to belong to another. The most common example is the purchase-money resulting trust: one party supplies the purchase price for property that is titled in another's name. The law implies that the titleholder holds the property for the benefit of the party who paid.
2. Constructive trust. A trust imposed by a court as a remedy to prevent unjust enrichment, fraud, or unconscionable conduct. Unlike a resulting trust, a constructive trust does not depend on any actual intent to create a trust relationship. It is a legal fiction deployed to strip a wrongdoer of property they should not in good conscience retain.
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Common Confusion
The terms "implied trust," "resulting trust," and "constructive trust" are frequently used interchangeably in older legal writing and occasionally in modern opinions, which creates real confusion in research. Burrill notes explicitly that implied trust is "a more general term than 'resulting' or 'constructive' trust" — meaning it encompasses both. Some historical sources use "implied trust" to refer specifically to resulting trusts, excluding constructive trusts on the theory that constructive trusts are purely remedial and not truly trusts at all. Modern trust law scholarship increasingly treats constructive trusts as a distinct category, and many courts reserve the implied-trust label for resulting trusts alone. Researchers should not assume a consistent meaning across jurisdictions or eras without examining how the source author defines the term.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Resulting Trust. Arises from the presumed intent of the parties or from failure of an express trust. Includes the purchase-money resulting trust and the resulting trust on failure of an express trust's purpose.
Constructive Trust. Imposed by equity irrespective of intent, as a remedy against fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, or unjust enrichment. Some courts and scholars classify constructive trusts outside the implied-trust category entirely, treating them as equitable remedies rather than true trust relationships.
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Why It Matters in Research
The most significant research trap with implied trust is terminological instability across time and jurisdiction. Nineteenth-century equity treatises — Story's Equity Jurisprudence, Hilliard on Real Property, Crabb's Real Property — use "implied trust" broadly and inconsistently. A passage citing an "implied trust" may be discussing what modern courts would call a resulting trust, a constructive trust, or occasionally something close to an express trust whose terms were not formally documented. Researchers reading historical equity sources must reconstruct the author's taxonomy before applying their holdings.
Another trap involves statutory modification. Many jurisdictions enacted statutes of frauds and statutes of uses that interacted with implied trusts in complicated ways: express trusts over real property had to be evidenced in writing, but resulting and constructive trusts were typically exempted from that requirement. Whether a particular implied trust fell within the writing exemption — or whether a court would even recognize the trust without documentation — varied considerably, and historical cases often turn on this classification.
The corpus connections here are significant. Research into resulting trusts will intersect with purchase-money doctrine (see estates_67), which has its own body of case law on when the purchase-money presumption is rebutted. Research into constructive trusts will pull toward fiduciary duty, fraud, and unjust enrichment clusters, which are largely treated in equity and remedies sources rather than trusts materials.
Modern researchers should also note that "implied trust" as a standalone term has largely retreated from judicial usage. Contemporary opinions almost invariably specify resulting or constructive trust. Finding the term "implied trust" in a modern opinion often signals that the court is quoting an older authority or that the jurisdiction's case law has not fully modernized its vocabulary.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's entries are substantively identical in their core formulation — "a trust raised or created by implication of law; a trust implied or presumed from circumstances" — suggesting a shared source or direct borrowing. This definition is accurate but thin, providing little guidance on the resulting/constructive distinction.
Burrill adds the critical qualification that implied trust is "a more general term" than either resulting or constructive trust, which is the most useful analytical contribution in the historical sources. His citations to Story's Equity Jurisprudence §1195 et seq. and Hilliard's Real Property point researchers toward the nineteenth-century doctrinal elaboration that the dictionary entries themselves omit.
Bouvier's entry for implied trust consists solely of a cross-reference to the entry for TRUST, offering no independent analysis. This is consistent with Bouvier's general practice of consolidating trust doctrine under a single master entry, but it means the entry is unhelpful for distinguishing implied trusts from other trust categories.
What the historical dictionaries collectively fail to address: the conditions under which implied trusts arise in practice, the evidentiary standards for establishing them, their interaction with the statute of frauds, and the doctrinal separation between resulting and constructive trusts that became increasingly important as equity jurisprudence matured through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Jurisdictional Note
The availability and scope of implied trusts — particularly constructive trusts — varies meaningfully across jurisdictions. Some states have codified resulting trust doctrine in their trust codes or property statutes, which may modify or displace the common-law implied-trust framework. Jurisdictions following the Uniform Trust Code or Restatement (Third) of Trusts may classify and analyze these relationships differently than jurisdictions still applying traditional equity rules.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Resulting Trusts — Purchase-Money and Failure-of-Express-Trust Resulting Trusts (The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia, estates_67)
Trust Protectors and Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Trust Instruments (The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia, estates_109)
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