Focusing on the private law of England, Scotland, France, Quebec and the Netherlands, this volume explores how the private law concepts of trust and patrimony interact in various jurisdictions, with a view to advancing the understanding of the trust as a fundamental legal concept. It comprises new and previously published papers written by distinguished comparative law scholars. The authors investigate whether the common law trust could be understood as a civil law patrimony by appropriation, and whether civil law and mixed traditions could create local versions of the common law trust using patrimony as the main conceptual building block.