 Thus it may be argued that despite the difficulties, a half-secret trust should be enforced if fully secret trusts are.The secret trust was originally conceived to prevent fraud enabled by statute or the common law, in line with the equitable maxim that "equity will not allow a statute to be used as a cloak for fraud".The "fraud" referred to is the denial of the existence of the trust by the intended trustee of the will, thus allowing him to apply it for his own purposes.