25B—Power of Court to authorise alterations and repairs
(1) The Supreme Court
may on the application of a trustee or of a beneficiary interested in the
trust property authorise or direct the expenditure by the trustee of such sum
or sums as the court thinks fit out of the capital or income of the trust
property or both or out of any part or parts thereof in and for building or
rebuilding or repairing, reinstating, altering, adding to or in any way
improving the trust property or any part thereof.
(1a) The Supreme Court
may require that notice be given of an application under subsection (1)
to any person who has, in the opinion of the Court, a proper interest in the
matter (but an order may be made, if the Court thinks fit, although no notice
has been given of the application).
(2) If there is no
ready money available for the said purposes or to the extent that the ready
money is insufficient, the Supreme Court may authorise or direct the trustee
to sell any part of the trust property or to raise money upon loan by mortgage
of the whole or any part or parts of the trust property for the purpose of
securing such loans or otherwise and in either case upon or subject to such
terms and conditions as the Court may by order authorise or direct.
(3) The Supreme Court
may give directions for the debiting of the expenditure (including the costs
of the application to the court) incurred for the purposes of this section to
capital or income or for the adjustment of the same between capital and income
in such manner as the Court in its discretion thinks just.
(4) This section does
not apply to any building or property which a trustee is bound forthwith to
convey absolutely to any beneficiary upon being requested to do so.
(5) This section
applies to trusts created either before or after the commencement of the
Trustee Act Amendment Act 1941 ; but nothing in this section shall
authorise the trustee to do anything which he is in express terms forbidden to
do, or to omit to do anything which he is in express terms directed to do, by
the instrument creating the trust.