trust

noun · Treuhand

No German institution matches the trust, so every rendering is a decision. Treuhand is the working equivalent for function, but it carries none of the split ownership, and in German practice the honest choice is often to keep the English word.

Which translation, when

Treuhandthe functional stand-in, one party holds assets in its own name for another. But title passes whole to the Treuhänder, the Treugeber holds only a contractual claim, there is no equitable ownership behind it.

Trustleft untranslated, the standard move in German legal writing when the instrument really is a common law trust. The foreign word signals a foreign institution instead of dressing it as a domestic one.

Why

A trust divides ownership in a way German property law does not permit, the trustee takes legal title, the beneficiary holds an equitable interest that follows the assets and survives the trustee’s insolvency. The German numerus clausus of property rights leaves no room for that split, so the Treuhand rebuilds the arrangement out of contract, full ownership sits with the Treuhänder and the Treugeber relies on an obligation. The protection gap shows in insolvency, a beneficiary’s interest binds the trust assets, a Treugeber must bring himself within § 47 InsO to pull the assets out, a hurdle the beneficiary of a trust never faces. Translate trust as Treuhand and the text asserts an equivalence of institutions where there is only an analogy of function, translate it as Vertrauen and the sentence stops being law altogether.

Typical mistakes

Vertrauen turns a property arrangement into a state of mind, held in trust is not im Vertrauen gehalten, and no German lawyer reads it as anything but machine output.
Treuhand suggests the beneficiary’s protection simply carries over, it does not, the Treugeber holds a claim against the Treuhänder, not a right in the assets, and his protection in insolvency is conditional rather than built in.
Stiftung is not a fallback for trust, a Stiftung is a legal entity with its own assets, a trust is a relationship over assets, the two answer different questions.

What matters

Estate and holding structures are where the word does damage: an English will or shareholders’ agreement declares that shares are held on trust, and the German rendering decides what the family or the co-investors think they own. Treuhand tells them their protection is contractual, Vertrauen tells them nothing at all, and only the untranslated trust warns them that a foreign regime governs.

Authority

§ 47 InsO

What the machine misses

Automatic translators cannot hold a line on trust, inside a financing clause it becomes Treuhand, in looser prose it slides into Vertrauen, and neither output flags the loss. The equitable interest, the part of the trust that protects the beneficiary when the trustee fails, has no German word to land in, so the sentence arrives complete and the protection arrives nowhere.

Examples

to hold shares on trust	Anteile treuhänderisch halten
the assets are held on trust for the buyer	die Vermögenswerte werden treuhänderisch für den Käufer gehalten
beneficiary of a trust	Begünstigter eines Trusts
to declare a trust	eine Treuhand begründen