DATELINE: February 26, 2009, Chicago
Stephanie Strom of the New York Times reports today that what was a potentially interesting court case involving the late Leona Helmsley’s charitable trust came to a rather undramatic end in Judge Troy K.Weber’s Manhattan courtroom. Not All of Helmsley’s Trust Has to Go to Dogs. It had been widely reported that Helmsley’s will had left billions of dollars to a charitable trust that provided that the money would be used for animals. Given Helmsley’s reputation as an...
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unpleasant person and the current recession, many people had a hard time with that result. We disagreed. Who are we to tell anyone how to distribute their property once they are dead? It’s their property and they should be able to what they like with it. Moreover, there are plenty of charities that serve our four-legged friends, meaning that this purported bequest was not as frivolous as many had portrayed it.
But if Helmsley truly wanted to help animals, she screwed up in drafting her will and the charitable trust. To his credit, Judge Webber ignored the policy implications underlying what had been portrayed as Helmsley’s wishes, preferring to focus on the plain language in the documents. His opinion is a little bit confusing because he does not clearly refer to the individual documents when discussing them. But in the end, he examines language in the charitable trust that states that the trustees of the charitable trust “may establish and administer programs for the charitable purposes authorized by Paragraph A [which would include charitable purposes identified in a Mission Statement] or they may, in their sole discretion, distribute the net income and principal of the Trust Fund to and among such one or more Charitable Organizations and in such amounts or proportions as the Trustees, in their sole discretion, shall determine.” This drafter wanted to make clear that the trustees should act in their sole discretion. She used the word “discretion” twice in the same sentence. We assume Charitable Organizations is broadly defined elsewhere in the document.
The case would have been far more interesting had the will and charitable trust just left everything to the dogs, so to speak, with no discretion on the part of the trustees. Strom points out that the courts have on occassion ignored the decedent’s wishes when it comes to charities that benefit animals, raising the possibility that the New York courts might have tried to find a way to circumvent clear language.
In our estimation, Judge Weber did right. It is clear from a press release that the trustees plan to use the funds in such areas as health care, medical research, human services, education, and various other areas. That is fine by us, but we hope that the trustees do provide some funding to animal-related charities. Mrs. Helmsley and her advisors didn’t do a very good drafting her estate planning documents if Mrs. Helmsley wanted to exclusively benefit animals. Nevertheless, it is clear to us that animals were important to her and that she wanted to provide assistance to them. Since Mrs. Helmsley accumulated this money and it was hers, we hope the trustees acknowledge her wishes through appropriate gifts of some of the money.
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