Ever heard of a concept called 'equitable ownership'?

OK, so this equitable ownership. In every 'normal' country, if you have stuff, you just have it. Period. Not in the UK. There is a thing called 'trust' (also an equity thing) which means that if you are a trustee, you own something, which was given to you by someone (settlor) but this guy did not quite give it to you - s/he gave you on someone else's (beneficiary's) behalf.

In other words: there was someone (settlor) who started all this. and owned a thing. He wanted someone else to have the thing. However, for some reason it is no possible that settlor gives the thing directly to that someone else. So the settlor chooses a trustee, who gets the thing instead of the someone else, and the someone else becomes beneficiary. If there is any profit in having the thing, or if the trustee sells the thing, s/he cannot keep the money, the beneficiary gets it.

It sounds fairly easy when you put it like this, but if you consider all the other problems, it becomes a mess. First thing is: legally - in common law - the true owner is the trustee. If the thing is, let's say, a piece of land, the trustee is the one recorded in the land register. However, he's at the same time not the owner, because equitable owner is the beneficiary (who is not owner in common law). So both these guys are owners, and are not owners.

Second thing: This is found nowhere in written statutes (Acts), it just happened and developed in the case law of equity courts. There is literally no written law talking about or codifying this thing. Still, it is very real. It happens every day. And because trusts and all this is equity business (...and has 'nothing to do' with common law), it takes precedence over common law, it doesn't have to be written, it just is. (And btw, have I mentioned that common law may mean three totally different things?)

I always thought that owning stuff is pretty much a binary thing - either you have it, or you don't have it. Well, in England and Wales (no idea how this works in Scotland or NI...), this has more levels than just plain 1 and 0.

It's a bit like Schrödinger ownership, if you allow me one physics students' joke.