Fariola, Lea Gabrielle M.

- 404 November 1, 2020

Reaction Paper on “The Critical Review of the Trust in the Philippines”

According to a famous line from a Philippine movie, “Trust? Big word.” This
dialogue has been easily accepted by many Filipinos when this movie was showing in the
cinemas because trust is, indeed, a big word and shall not be taken lightly. Why this line
became a big catch to the masses is because it has emphasized a usually overlooked virtue
and its consequences once it is not given importance.

Like in the legal word, trust seems to be less tackled even though there a lot of
scenarios that gives rise to trust relations, even if most of the time, the parties do not even
know that they are engaged in such type of civil arrangement. This occurs in cases of implied
trust where the relationship has arisen because of operation of law and not because it was
expressly stated by the parties. According to Dychiao’s review on trust in the Philippines,
there exists a problem called legal uncertainty. This is also the reason why he thinks that trust
is considered to be an uncommon concept which tends to be less discussed and less applied in
the country.

There are two major factors that he cited as to why legal uncertainty occurs and, I
think, we, as laymen can attest to such. First is that laws on trust are not accessible. Its
inaccessibility is not only as to the public but even to the legal body as well. Since implied
trusts are not governed by stipulations from the parties but on different circumstances, it is
governed mainly by jurisprudence. Also, since this type of arrangement has conflicting and
complex rules, having based on general common law, it would have been helpful if
information about it can be easily acquired. Before the internet, it was hard for the lawyers to
gain access to much needed data to support their cases. The inaccessibility was strongly
proven in the article by the fact that Philippine lawyers would even seek advice from
American consultant to help them in understanding fully the concepts that surround trust.

Another problem is that trust laws are not comprehensive. What then is the effect if a
law is not comprehensive? We cannot automatically apply the law. Most of our laws have
provision that contain specific information therein as to how it must be applied. Some of our
laws, especially in our civil code provide for general rules and exceptions to such rules. In
our Revised Penal Code, the provisions are clear and are easy to apply since they contain
elements which you only need to look for in order for you apply such provision or not.

According to Dychiao, a probable solution could be the codification of rules to be

imposed by administrative bodies. However, there are also a lot of problems that arise in this
solution. First is that which government body should do such codification? Currently, any
administrative body, who is affected by a certain statute would promulgate rules. Now, there
arises another problem. If there comes an instance where two or more are responsible for a
certain nature of transaction, which promulgation shall prevail. Moreover, if the solution for
an incomprehensive trust law is the creation of codified policies of administrative bodies,
there also arises a question if it would actually be comprehensive provide that the study of the
latter is less intricate that the passage of statutes.

Usually, the best response to knowledge gap is information. Now, the legal profession
is imposed upon a responsibility to disseminate the beauty of trust laws and how they could
be beneficial, for practical reasons, to the lives of the Filipinos and to inform the latter that
they might already be in this arrangement without knowing that they are.