When Fiduciary Duties Fail in Practice: Why Public Trust in the Legal System Is Eroding
Most people grow up believing that the law is a stable, reliable system — that judges apply the rules consistently, that government bodies act in the public interest, and that fiduciaries are held to the highest standards of accountability. But when you step inside the machinery of the legal system, especially as an ordinary citizen without a lawyer, you quickly discover a very different reality. The gap between what the law promises and how it actually operates is wide enough to swallow public trust whole.
One of the clearest examples of this gap appears in cases involving fiduciaries — especially government fiduciaries like the Public Guardian and Trustee. On paper, fiduciary law is one of the strictest areas of the common law. It requires complete transparency, full accounting, loyalty, and fairness. It reverses the usual burden of proof: the fiduciary must justify its actions, not the beneficiary. These rules exist to protect vulnerable people from being taken advantage of by those who manage their money or make decisions on their behalf.
But in practice, these protections often evaporate the moment the fiduciary is a government institution.
Instead of applying strict scrutiny, many judges and lawyers treat statutory bodies as inherently trustworthy. The assumption is that a government fiduciary is neutral, objective, and incapable of meaningful error. This belief is not grounded in law — it is grounded in institutional culture. And it has real consequences. When a beneficiary raises concerns about missing documents, incomplete accounts, or procedural unfairness, the response is often a shrug. The institution is presumed correct; the citizen is presumed mistaken.
This dynamic creates a structural imbalance that the public rarely sees until they are caught in it. Fiduciary duties, which should protect the beneficiary, end up protecting the institution instead. Procedural fairness, which should be the foundation of every legal process, becomes optional. And the ordinary person — the one the law is supposed to protect — is left feeling unheard, dismissed, and powerless.
The erosion of public trust doesn’t come from dramatic scandals. It comes from these quiet, everyday failures of accountability. It comes from courts treating government actors as infallible. It comes from lawyers who decline to challenge institutional decisions because they believe it is futile. It comes from a legal culture that prioritizes efficiency and deference over scrutiny and fairness.
The tragedy is that the law itself is not the problem. Fiduciary principles are clear, powerful, and protective. Procedural fairness is a cornerstone of justice. The problem is the disconnect between doctrine and practice — a disconnect that the public is never told about, but experiences firsthand when they try to assert their rights.
Restoring public trust requires more than repeating that “the system works.” It requires acknowledging where it doesn’t. It requires judges to apply fiduciary duties consistently, even when the fiduciary is a government body. It requires lawyers to challenge institutional assumptions instead of reinforcing them. And it requires transparency — not just in legal doctrine, but in how the system actually functions.
Ordinary citizens can trust the law only when the law is applied as written, not as assumed. Accountability is not a threat to institutions; it is what keeps them legitimate. And until fiduciary duties are honoured in practice, not just in textbooks, public trust will continue to erode — not because people misunderstand the law, but because they understand all too well how it fails them.
