Opinion ID: 1963790
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: II-A The Legal Effect of the 1903 Deed

Text: To answer whether Miriam Winslow's 1903 conveyance created a charitable trust or was a conditional gift establishing in the City of Portland a fee simple determinable, we must, as we have many times observed, seek out the intention of the particular donor as objectively manifested in all the circumstances legally admissible for consideration and uniquely relevant to the transaction under scrutiny. We conclude, here, that the objective import of Miriam Winslow's conveyance was the creation of a charitable trust. Initially, we advert to the countless number of decisions finding trusts in the absence of express language of trust. See: e.g., Neely v. Hoskins, 84 Me. 386, 390, 24 A. 882 (1892); Inhabitants of York v. Stewart, 110 Me. 523, 87 A. 372 (1913); Manufacturers National Bank v. Woodward, supra; City of Belfast v. Goodwill Farm, supra. Of the two cases decided by this Court when it was previously called upon to distinguish determinable fee from trust, [19] one case imposed a trust based on language similar to the words before us. Neely v. Hoskins, supra. The other, City of Bangor v. Merrill Trust Company, supra, found a determinable fee. In City of Bangor, however, while the language was similar to that here, the circumstances were sufficiently different, as apparent from the face of the instrument, to distinguish City of Bangor from the case at bar. The will there in question contained a comprehensive plan disposing of the testator's property through several express trusts as well as through the provision construed as creating a determinable fee. 149 Me. at pp. 161-163, 99 A.2d 298. It was, therefore, reasonable for this Court to conclude that the wording of the construed provision, strikingly different from the trusts imposed elsewhere in the same instrument, was intended to convey some interest other than a trust. Here, we have no similar indication that had Miriam Winslow wished to create a trust, she knew how to do it by express language. The face of Miriam Winslow's deed reveals that she had two purposes in mind when she gave her property to the City of Portland. She wished, first, to provide a park in the neighborhood where she had grown up. Thus, she directed the grantee to maintain the gift, the same to be improved and cared for under the direction and supervision of the Park Commissioners of the City of Portland . . .. Should the establishment of the park not be completed within two years of June, 1903, she ordered reversion to the grantor. [20] Second, Miriam Winslow desired to honor her parents, also residents of the Winslow Park neighborhood. To this end, she recited as consideration her love and affection for the elder Winslows and directed that a memorial tablet be forever maintained at some suitable point within said park. (emphasis supplied) In light of her dual purpose, and her express wish that her objects continue forever, we believe it more consonant with Miriam Winslow's true intent that her conveyance be held to create a charitable trust rather than to be a gift to the City of Portland of a fee simple determinable. By a determinable fee Miriam Winslow's goals would be achieved only so long as the City would choose to comply with the terms of the deed. Upon breach of condition, there would be no mechanism whereby the benefit to the neighborhood, and the memorial to James and Ella Winslow, could be ordered continued; instead, the property would pass to Miss Winslow's heirs, however remote and unknown to her they might be. Through the establishment of a charitable trust, however, the City would be placed under affirmative fiduciary obligation to carry out Miriam Winslow's purposes in perpetuity. Upon breach, the City could be ordered to comply; if for some reason it could not continue as trustee the appropriate Court could replace it with another. Finally, were some supervening event to frustrate the original scheme, as here, the doctrine of cy pres might be available to save Miss Winslow's plan.