However, he also made reference, obiter, to limits, namely that a testator should not be able to give the go-by to the requirements of the Wills Act because they did not choose to comply with them:

A testator cannot reserve to himself a power of making future unwitnessed dispositions by merely naming a trustee and leaving the purposes of the trust to be supplied afterwards.

These obiter comments have been picked up in subsequent cases and used to support the view that, in the case of half-secret trusts, communication of the trust and its terms must take place before or contemporaneously with the execution of the will (contrast fully secret trusts, which are valid provided communication takes place before death, whether it occurs before or after the will).