Rules should be on the Validating trait

[RomanDeNu]

If you leave the rules property off your model, Laravel assumes it's a relationship then fails due to the relationship not existing. If you were to put the rules property onto the ValidatingTrait defaulted to an empty array. Laravel wouldn't throw the error stating Rules is not a relationship.

[dwightwatson]

Don't really understand the issue here... don't use the trait if you're not providing rules for the model to validate with? I don't believe we can set the property to be an empty array on the trait without it throwing an error when the property is redefined on the model (otherwise it probably would have been done already).

[dalabarge]

And to clarify, if you extend the ValidatingModel you get the $rules = [] for free.