Breach of Trust Conditions
A breach of a trust condition is more than:
- not trusting a lawyer or limited licensee; or
- believing a lawyer or limited licensee broke a promise to you.
An important role of lawyers or limited licensees is to hold important documents or property ‘in trust’ until certain things happen. The agreements that the lawyer or limited licensee enters into to set the rules around when and how the important documents or property can be used are called ‘trust conditions’.
Trust conditions will often include ‘undertakings’. These are promises by lawyers or limited licensees to carry out certain tasks or fulfill certain conditions.
For example, in a family law dispute:
- You signed a transfer document to transfer title of the family car to your ex-spouse, on the condition that your ex-spouse pays a credit card bill.
- Your ex-spouse’s lawyer undertakes to hold the transfer ‘in trust’ until they confirm that the credit card bill is paid.
- If the lawyer uses the transfer document before the credit card bill is paid, they are in a breach of a trust condition.
A lawyer or limited licensee:
- must not impose trust conditions that cannot be fulfilled;
- must not accept trust conditions that they do not intend to fulfill; and
- must honour every trust condition once accepted.
See section 7.2-11 of the Law Society of Saskatchewan Code of Professional Conduct for Lawyers or the Law Society of Saskatchewan Code of Professional Conduct for Limited Licensees for more information.
Is the opposing counsel: