Trusts SQE1 practice questions

What Trusts covers in SQE1

The SRA's assessment specification for assessments from 1 September 2026 calls the subject Trusts Law. Its assessment objectives are express and implied trusts, the fiduciary relationship, trustees' duties, powers and liability, and equitable remedies. In more detail:

• Express trusts: the three certainties for fixed and discretionary trusts, formalities, constitution, and the exceptions to the rule that equity will not assist a volunteer, including Re Rose, Strong v Bird and Choithram v Pagarani.
• Beneficial entitlement: fixed, discretionary, vested and contingent interests, and the rule in Saunders v Vautier.
• Purpose trusts: the distinction between charitable trusts and non-charitable purpose trusts.
• Implied trusts: automatic and presumed resulting trusts, common intention constructive trusts of the family home in sole and joint names, and proprietary estoppel.
• Strangers to the trust: knowing receipt and dishonest assistance.
• Fiduciary duties: not profiting from the position, not buying trust property, and avoiding conflicts of interest and duty.
• Trustees: appointment, removal and retirement, the duty of care, investment, and the statutory powers of maintenance and advancement.
• Liability and remedies: breach of trust, the measure of liability, protection of trustees, limitation, and tracing in equity.

The 2026 review named the three constitution cases, split resulting trusts into automatic and presumed, and renamed stranger liability as knowing receipt and dishonest assistance. Foreign law, assets and taxes are excluded.

Where it sits in FLK2

From January 2027 FLK2 session 1 covers Trusts, Wills and the Administration of Estates, Land Law and Solicitors Accounts in the context of wills, with the questions in a random order. Trusts overlaps with both neighbours. A will often creates a trust for a minor, so maintenance and advancement come up in estate scenarios, and the family home runs across Trusts and Land Law.

The SRA's 2019 blueprint, the only version published in full, puts Trusts at 14 to 20 percent of FLK2. In the SRA's annual report for 2023/24 the mean scaled score for Trust Law was 300, level with the score needed to pass an FLK. Questions follow the law as at 11 September 2026, the cut-off for the January 2027 sitting.

Where candidates go wrong

• Gift or declaration. Equity will not perfect a failed gift by treating it as a declaration of trust, but a clear self-declaration needs no transfer at all. Re Rose applies only where the donor has done everything the donor alone had to do.
• Formalities by type of property. A declaration of trust of land must be evidenced in signed writing, which can come later. A disposition of a subsisting equitable interest must itself be in signed writing, whatever the property.
• Maintenance and advancement. Income for a minor beneficiary is held under section 31 of the Trustee Act 1925, and a contingent beneficiary becomes entitled to the income at 18. Advancement under section 32 extends to the whole of the presumptive share for trusts created or arising on or after 1 October 2014, when the Inheritance and Trustees' Powers Act 2014 came into force, and to half for older trusts.
• Self-dealing. A trustee's purchase of trust property can be set aside however fair the price, which is a different rule from a purchase of a beneficiary's own interest.
• Tracing through a mixed account. The trustee is presumed to spend their own money first, but not where that would defeat the beneficiary's claim to an asset bought from the account. Money paid in later does not restore trust money already spent.

How to revise Trusts

Learn the Trustee Act 2000 as a checklist: the duty of care set by the trustee's own knowledge and any professional status, the general power of investment, which does not cover land, the standard investment criteria and regular review, and the duty to take advice unless it is reasonably unnecessary. Many trustee questions ask which of these the trustees missed.

For the family home, set the sole-name and joint-names cases side by side, since the starting point differs. The Wills and Estates questions cover the estate side of a will trust, and the SQE1 study plan divides FLK2 session 1 time across all four of its areas.