Where a deed of variation makes discrete amendments to a trust deed rather than replacing it, the pre-amendment wording of the trust deed forms part of the relevant context for construing the amended instrument, and it is not necessary for there to be ambiguity before this comparison can be undertaken. Where beneficiary classes in a trust deed are mutually exclusive, excluding a person from one class by deed of variation does not automatically cause them to fall within a lower-priority class; the variation must be construed objectively to determine whether it was intended to remove the person as a beneficiary altogether or to reclassify them.
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