Legal and beneficial ownership is combined until it is separated.

“Ownership under legal and beneficial is encapsulated as one, until it is split, at which point ownership of the formal estate is recognised by law and ownership of the beneficial estate is recognised only in equity." (Page 25, Land Law, Kevin Gray and Susan Francis Gray, 3rd Edition) (p. 29).

When applying this to trusts and foundations, the separation of legal and beneficial ownership is automatic and inherent.

Trustee/Foundation Board holds legal title
Beneficiaries hold beneficial interest

We have seen a modern application of this in the case of Secretary of State for Health and Social Care v PPE Medpro Limited [2025] EWHC 2486 (Comm)
where many of the underlying funds had been transferred out to a trust.

Whilst investigations into this are ongoing, we can see the separation mentioned above with the trustees being legal owners and Michelle Mone and her children as the beneficiaries.
Prima facie, the Government couldn’t obtain these underlying funds due to the concept of the separate corporate personality as established in Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd [1897] but also due to the separation of ownership as discussed above.

Once assets are transferred into a trust, the legal estate vests in the trustees and the beneficial estate vests in the beneficiaries. This separation is automatic and creates a structural barrier to enforcement. In PPE Medpro, the government faced precisely this issue: even if Michelle Mone and her children were beneficiaries, they did not hold legal title.

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