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fiduciary duty

fiduciary duty

4 7.9
Legal responsibility to act in another person's best interest, for example when managing their money
  • noun
  • /fɪˈduːʃiˌɛri ˈdjuːti/
  • Formal
translation icon : deber fiduciario
  • As board members, they must fulfill their fiduciary duty to ensure that the company's assets are protected.
  • breach of fiduciary duty
  • fiduciary duty to the people

Moving on from the breach of contract claims, the breach of fiduciary duty claim doesn't hold much water either.

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Examples

  • The question of breach of fiduciary duty has also arisen in the area of provider incentives.

    Academic text (2001)
  • For one thing, insolvency shifts a company's fiduciary duty from the shareholders to the creditors.

    Academic text (2001)
  • And they have a fiduciary duty to use our private information and their expertise to help us.

  • I trust you understand the various fiduciary duties we have as a university.

  • Shareholders could charge the company with breach of a fiduciary duty, especially if it knew about the security breach but did nothing to correct it.

    Academic text (2003)
  • And no one seems sure what damages a plaintiff is entitled to under the fiduciary duty approach.

    Academic text (2000)
  • Breaches of fiduciary duties by senior employees have also been strictly dealt with.

    Academic text (1990)
  • Is it a violation of the firm's fiduciary duty to a lender to give out employee bonuses?

    Blog text (4)
  • The AMC share board has the duty, the fiduciary duty to make sure that AMC shareholders are protected.

  • Financial advisors have a fiduciary duty to act in their clients' best interests when managing investments.

Synonyms

duty
vsfiduciary duty
1.0

Something you must do because of law, your job, or what is right

is narrower and applies to legal trust and asset management
obligation
vsfiduciary duty
524 3.2

A duty you feel to do something because it is right or someone helped you

is narrower and focuses on legal trust and managing another's assets
legal duty
vsfiduciary duty
  • Formal
2 4.0

Something a person must do because the law says so

is a specific legal responsibility tied to trust and managing another's assets

How Binding

legal duty
  • Formal
2 4.0
fiduciary duty
  • Formal
4 7.9
obligation
524 3.2
recommendation
553 2.5
expectation
633 2.8

Surface Forms

Morphology

fiduciary + duty

The phrase is a straightforward compositional combination: 'fiduciary' denotes a person entrusted with another's assets or interests and 'duty' denotes an obligation, so together they literally mean the obligation of a fiduciary to act in the other's best interests. While the legal nuances are technical, the core meaning is directly derivable from the constituent words, making it understandable to a learner who knows both terms.

Etymology

Fiduciary duty comes from a word that meant 'trust'. A fiduciary is someone you trust to look after money or property, and a duty is their promise or job to act for that person. So fiduciary duty means the promise to always act in another person's 'best interest'.