Court Opinion

ID: 9729888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:51:29.161164+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:01.965913
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE KARMEIER, dissenting: It is often said that we live in a rootless society, but in rural Illinois counties and communities, “place” still matters. Forty years ago, when La Fern Blackman and Ettoile Davis signed their wills, small towns in rural Illinois were — and to a large extent still are — the gathering places for farmers from the surrounding environs, the economic and societal hubs for a predominantly agrarian way of life committed to, among other laudable values, helping neighbors in need. “Neighbors,” perhaps then a broader term than current usage admits, meant people from surrounding farms as well as those in town, where everyone went to learn, worship, visit, buy and sell. La Fern and Ettoile, as rural landowners, were part of that culture, and, because they valued its institutions and the community of which they were a part, they sought to perpetuate them with testamentary gifts to local charitable organizations. That is what La Fern and Ettoile intended, and that is what their attorneys no doubt assumed they had effectuated — with alternate dispositional provisions designed to ensure local benefit— but with the filing of this opinion, and its close-enough analysis, those last wishes have been effectively and unnecessarily thwarted. The majority acknowledges at the outset that our goal is to effectuate the settlors’ intent, considering the plain meaning of the words they used, but the majority then undertakes a strained construction of those words and their implications in a puzzling effort to sustain Kids Hope’s possession of, and entitlement to, assets and income in pursuit of a mission beyond anything the settlors would have imagined or intended. In the end, the majority focuses more upon whether Kids Hope has the ability, and is suited, to provide services to children in Edgar County, without giving any meaningful consideration to the extent it actually does so. It seems to me, under this disposition, the sisters’ gifts to the children of Edgar County have been diluted to near insignificance. The majority’s strained construction is both baffling and unnecessary because, if the aim here is merely to ascertain intent and sustain charitable gifts, as professed, under the alternate provisions of the settlors’ wills, charities will still benefit. The obvious difference is, under the alternate disposition, local charities will likely benefit in one instance — where a local trustee is to name charitable organizations deemed worthy (La Fern) — and will certainly benefit in the other — where local charities were specifically named by the settlor (Ettoile). That is undoubtedly what the settlors intended. During the entirety of the sisters’ lives, ECCH, as embodied by the physical home on Eads Avenue, in Paris, Illinois, had a well-defined, self-avowed purpose: to provide “for the education of dependent children of Edgar County, Illinois, and for the custody and maintenance of such children.” (Emphases added.) Had La Fern and Ettoile intended to benefit children across the state — or even throughout the nation — there were undoubtedly organizations that could have accomplished that purpose, and to which they could have left a suitable endowment. However, tellingly, that is not what they did. La Fern’s intent to benefit local organizations can be discerned in the initial charities she chose: the Edgar County Children’s Home and the Embarrass Cemetery of Edgar County. At the time her will was executed, ECCH was embodied in a physical structure in Paris, Illinois, and its mission had not yet expanded beyond Edgar County. In the event those organizations “ceased to operate or exist,” the trustee, a local bank, was to designate alternate organizations to receive the money. Similarly, Ettoile’s will benefitted the same two local organizations and she made clear her intent to benefit only local charities, in the event those two organizations “cease[d] to function in their present capacity,” by specifically naming three alternate, local charities: First Methodist Church of Paris Memorial Foundation, Inc., the Edgar County Chapter of the American Cancer Society, and the Edgar County Heart Association. At the time her will was executed, ECCH operated only out of the home on Eads Avenue and only served children in Edgar County. In 2003, ECCH “ceased to exist” in a corporate and organizational sense by reason of its merger, as the majority acknowledges. Certainly, by 2006, when the building in Paris was sold, the last vestiges of ECCH, as La Fern and Ettoile knew it, were gone. The trustee recognized as much, and shortly thereafter petitioned the circuit court. Hence, ECCH, as La Fern knew it, “ceased to operate or exist” when the mission was expanded, the organizational entity disappeared, and the displacive entity sold the building in Paris. Consequently, the alternate beneficiary provision of La Fern’s will should be given effect and the trustee should, pursuant to La Fern’s direction, be allowed to distribute income to “such charitable organization or organizations as it deems worthy of said money” With respect to the beneficiary provisions in Ettoile’s will, it is clear that ECCH long ago ceased to function in the capacity it had during her life. Nine years after her death it expanded its mission statewide, well beyond what it was in her lifetime. Then it merged with Hudelson, having obtained the ominous promise that Hudelson would provide services to children in Edgar County “for as long as it is financially feasible to do so.” Then, not surprisingly, the children’s home that embodied the charity, as Ettoile knew it, was closed by Kids Hope and sold. In light of these facts of record, it simply cannot be said that ECCH functioned in the capacity it had during Ettoile’s lifetime. Since it does not, the alternate local charities should take. The majority opinion clearly frustrates the intent of these settlors, and I suspect, it will have more far-reaching consequences as well. Attorneys, at additional expense to clients, will be compelled to spend more time drafting provisions for charitable dispositions, striving to anticipate every possible contingency and to specify the meaning of existence. After all, “cease to operate or exist” and “cease to function in their present capacity” are no longer phrases subject to their common understanding. Now, when they do, they don’t. They “exist” and “function,” according to the majority, if we can still hear the faint echo of their demise. If a mere specter of the original charity survives, if it provides a mere pittance of the original benefit to those for whom it was intended, it lives on in some ethereal plane, and courts will be loathe to hold the gift lapsed, even where — as here — the settlors have specified alternate charities. An opinion such as this could actually have a chilling effect on testamentary giving to charities, because hereafter no one can be sure where the money will end up. In my view, we are not at liberty to choose charities that we deem fit to receive the settlors’ money (pursuant to La Fern’s will, that is the trustee’s prerogative); nor is the Attorney General, whose intervention on behalf of one charity over another belies the statewide diffusion of the local benefit originally intended. It is the intent of the settlors that we must honor, and that intent is best implemented by recourse to the alternate provisions of their wills. The majority pays lip service to ascertaining and honoring the settlors’ intent, but ultimately ignores their clearly discernible wishes and substitutes its judgment for theirs. I cannot subscribe to that outcome. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the circuit court of Edgar County.