Sears v. Parker
| Decision Date | 03 January 1907 |
| Citation | 79 N.E. 772,193 Mass. 551 |
| Parties | SEARS v. PARKER, Atty. Gen., et al. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
John C Gray and Roland Gray, for plaintiff.
This case was heard before a single justice and reserved for the full court upon the question 'whether the widows' and orphans' fund of Trinity Church, in the city of Boston, is a fund held upon such a charitable trust that it may, on a proper case being made out, be directed by the court to be applied cy pres.' The facts proved and the scheme proposed at the hearing are not reported, and we have no occasion to consider anything but the question presented by the reservation.
This fund was originally raised by a subscription of persons connected with Trinity Church in 1804, and was stated to be 'for the benefit of the widows and orphan children that may be left by the future ministers of this church.' Since then it has increased greatly by accumulation. In another part of the subscription paper, after referring to the annuity for the benefit of Mrs. Anne Parker, widow of a deceased bishop and rector of the church who was primarily to receive the income, it was said that after her decease the fund was 'to be directed to the benefit of the successive clergymen of said parish,' etc. At a meeting of the subscribers held on December 30, 1804, a scheme for the management and use of the fund was voted, providing that the income should be used, first, for the benefit of the widow and minor children of the late Bishop Parker, and then to be paid to the widow or orphan child or children of any rector of the church, and if, by accumulation, the fund should become so large as to yield an annual income of more than one thousand dollars, new funds should be created from the accumulation as follows: First, one for the widows and minor child or children of the assistant ministers of the church, and then one for the support of the dignity of the bishop of Massachusetts when such bishop should be the rector of Trinity Church, and then one for the 'use and benefit of the bishop, rector, assistant minister or for such other object connected with this church, as the warden and vestry thereof for the time being may in their judgment deem fit and advisable.' Provisions were made as to the amounts that might be expended for each of these objects, in succession before the application of any money to the creation of the next fund mentioned in order, and other details as to the management and use were prescribed, which we need not consider. The payments that may be made to widows and minor children were limited to cases in which they had no considerable income from other sources, and these payments were not to exceed $1,000 per year to the widow and minor children of the rector, and $800 per year to the widow and minor children of the assistant minister.
By St. 1831, c. 83, Trinity Church was incorporated and provision was made in section 4 of the act for the appointment of a trustee or trustees to hold and manage this fund, conformably to the directions given in the vote already referred to.
As a general proposition, a gift made for the support of needy widows and orphans of a particular class is an eleemosynary public charity. This has been established by so many cases, and with such full discussion, that there is no occasion to consider the reasons on which the rule is founded. Saltonstall v. Sanders, 11 Allen, 446-457; Jackson v. Phillips, 14 Allen, 539-551; Burbank v. Burbank, 152 Mass. 254-256, 25 N.E. 427, 9 L. R. A. 748; Minns v. Billings, 183 Mass. 126-129, 66 N.E. 593, 97 Am. St. Rep. 420; Atty. Gen. v. Goulding, 2 Bro. C. C. 428; Collinson v. Pater, 2 Russ. & M. 344; Bristow v. Bristow, 5 Beav. 289; Thompson v. Corbey, 27 Beav. 649; Thompson v. Thompson, 1 Coll. C. C. 381-392.
The gift in the present case is primarily to persons of a class, and not to designated individuals. The members of this class, for all time, are to take. The class, considered strictly, is very small, and the only question is whether the object is so general and indefinite as to be deemed of common and public benefit, and so a public charity. It includes the families of deceased clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the selection of them is limited to those in which the husband or father was a rector or assistant minister of Trinity Church. In the course of many years the number benefited might be large, and while the number ultimately receiving a direct benefit is limited to those connected with this religious society, the larger class of clergymen of the same religious faith are indirectly helped by the chance that they may be chosen to one of these places and their families receive assistance from this fund. In Attorney General v. Old South Society, 13 Allen, 474-476, 492, it appears that a fund was established 'for the support of the widows and fatherless children of ministers of the church,' and although it is not expressly stated that this was a public charity, the decision of the case seems to have been upon that assumption. In Kent v. Dunham, 42 Mass. 216, 7 N.E. 730, 56 Am. Rep. 667, a devise to trustees, expressed to be 'for the aid and support of those of my children and their descendants who may be destitute and in the opinion of said trustees need such aid,' was held to be not a public charity, and void. We infer, although the statement in the opinion is not in these terms, that one reason of the decision is that the class was not sufficiently large and indefinite to make the gift of common and public benefit.
We think that there are strong reasons for holding that the fund in the present case is a public...
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