#fidecomiso

El fideicomiso no era, como el legado, una disposición de carácter formal. Se puede definir como una súplica hecha por una persona el fideicomitente a otra el fiduciario para que entregara algo a una tercera el fideicomisario. Podía hacerse oralmente o por escrito, estableciéndolo en un testamento, aunque esto no era necesario; muy frecuentemente el fideicomiso se consignaba en codícilo.

En un principio, no tuvo sanción legal; la entrega dependía dela buena fe del fiduciario. Ya con Augusto, se autorizó a los magistrados a intervenir para asegurar el cumplimiento de los fideicomisos. Más tarde, dicho cumplimiento podía ser demandado en un procedimiento extraordinario antemagistrados especiales, los pretores fideicomisarios (Inst. 2, 23, 1).

Podía hacerse para un plazo determinado y así, por sustitución fideicomisaria se podían instituir fideicomisarios sucesivos, de manera que se favoreciera primero a uno y después de cierto plazo a otro (Gayo, 2, 277).

El fideicomiso podía ser de dos clases: particular o universal. 

El fideicomisoparticular recaía sobre objetos determinados y el universal podía incluir toda la herencia o una parte de la misma. Se usó generalmente para favorecer a aquellas personas que no tuvieran la testamenti factio passiva.

Dada la similitud entre el fideicomiso particular y el legado, la legislación romana aplicó a aquéllas mismas reglas que había elaborado para este último, tanto en lo que se refería a su adquisición, como en lo relativo a las modalidades, a las causas de invalidez y a las limitaciones, ya que el heredero podía hacer valer las mismas restricciones de la Ley Falcidia por conducto del Senadoconsulto Pegasiano.

Caracteristicas:

Bilateral. -Es necesario que existan dos partes, el fiduciante y el fiduciario.

Consensual. Queda perfeccionado desde el momento en que las partes hubieran dado su consentimiento.

Oneroso. Salvo estipulación en contrario, el fiduciario tendrá derecho al reembolso de los gastos y a una retribución.

Confianza. Es un aspecto fundamental en este contrato. El fiduciante deposita una total confianza en el fiduciario.

CRS defines the term “Entity” to mean

“a legal per­son or a legal arrange­ment, such as a cor­po­ra­tion, part­ner­ship, trust, or foundation.”

At first view, a cor­po­ra­tion seems to be con­sid­ered a legal arrange­ment and not  a legal per­son. The exam­ples “cor­po­ra­tion, part­ner­ship, trust” how­ever relate to both legal per­son and legal arrange­ment. CRS doest not dis­tin­guish between legal per­son and legal arrange­ment because  dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions will clas­sify part­ner­ships and trusts dif­fer­ently, i.e. some­times an entity, some­times a legal arrangement.

On the ques­tion of what is an entity, the com­men­tary on the CRS enlight­ens as follows:

“This term is intended to cover any per­son other than an indi­vid­ual (i.e. a nat­ural per­son), in addi­tion to any legal arrange­ment. Thus, e.g. a cor­po­ra­tion, part­ner­ship, trust, fide­icomiso, foun­da­tion ( fon­da­tion, Stiftung), com­pany, co-operative, asso­ci­a­tion, or aso­ciación en par­tic­i­pación, falls within the mean­ing of the term “Entity”.”

This expla­na­tion leaves the reader with the sorry task of try­ing to find out what legal arrange­ments will be enti­ties. A legal arrange­ment is broader than a con­tract, since trust deeds are typ­i­cally not con­sid­ered to be con­tracts. A legal arrange­ment hence encom­passes con­tracts and uni­lat­eral declarations.

We will approach this topic by look­ing to the fideo­comiso, a con­struct of nowa­days Latin Amer­i­can law, although, pre­vi­ously known by Roman and Ger­man law. Wikipedia explains:

A trust or fidecomiso1 (Latin fide­icom­mis­sum fides, “faith” and com­mis­sus, “com­mis­sion”) is a con­tract under which one or more per­sons trans­mits goods, money or rights, present or future, of his prop­erty to another per­son (a nat­ural or legal per­son) so that it admin­is­ters or invests the assets for their own ben­e­fit or for the ben­e­fit of a third party called beneficiary.

Cer­tainly all escrows would fall under that def­i­n­i­tion of fiedi­comiso. How­ever, it is not clear to me whether a reten­tion of title, a lien or pledge that neces­si­tates pos­ses­sion of the cred­i­tor would be con­sid­ered an Entity for pur­poses of the CRS. In all those legal insti­tutes one party has pos­ses­sion of prop­erty owned by another party. The pos­sess­ing party has to man­age the prop­erty in ways that honor the own­er­ship of another.  Since the ambi­tion of the CRS is so grand –catch all those tax evaders—it seems rea­son­able to assume that even a reten­tion of title is a fide­comiso and hence an Entity.

The prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions are enor­mous. Any­one grant­ing credit against col­lat­eral, be it reten­tion of title of pledge, may be deemed an entity, with the result that they have to report their cus­tomers. (No good time to be a pawnbroker.)

It is once again vex­ing that the law and the CRS do not oper­ate with clar­ity so that pre­sum­ably inno­cent bystanders to tax eva­sion are caught in a whirl­wind of red tape.

One ques­tion remains: Are power of attor­neys con­sid­ered enti­ties for CRS pur­poses. It seems far-fetched since the def­i­n­i­tion of fide­icomi­sio talks about the trans­fer of prop­erty whereas a power of attor­ney typ­i­cally does not com­prise such trans­fer. How­ever, the fide­icomi­sio includes future transfers.

Lawyers who do not want to take a posi­tion on the ques­tion whether a power of attor­ney is an entity might say the clas­si­fi­ca­tion depends on the facts and cir­cum­stances. The facts and cir­cum­stances to con­sider will be how close the power of attor­ney is to a sta­ple fide­icomiso. The cri­te­ria I can imag­ine are how clearly fidu­ciary duties are spelled out or dis­cernible from the con­text. The more fidu­ciary duties are spelled out, the more likely the con­tract or legal arrange­ment will be clas­si­fied as an entity for CRS purposes.

Overly broad def­i­n­i­tions of the CRS ren­der much of the stan­dard absurd. That a reten­tion of title or a power of attor­ney are deemed Enti­ties is a view clearly based on the lan­guage of the CRS. How courts are going to fix this mess remains a mystery.