Court Opinion

ID: 9832278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:47:09.93396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:45.138639
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
Counsel for appellees courteously insists, on motion for rehearing that it is not clear from our opinion which of the several instruments discussed therein and disclosed by the evidence we hold creates the trust. As is shown by our opinion, we base our conclusion upon the declaration of October 12, 1915. It is true that the subsequent conveyance of the land made the trust fund available to the donee, but that fact did not, in our opinion, constitute the instrument an executory trust. It is said that—
“A trust is executory when some further act is directed to be done in order to complete and perfect the trust intended to be created. A misconception should here be guarded against. When by the terms of the trust as created, and for the purpose of carying it into effect, the trustee is directed to do some act with the property, the trust is not thereby executory. Giving property to a trustee upon trust to convey to a person, or upon trust to convey it upon certain specified trusts, does not render the trust executory. * * * If the scheme has been imperfectly declared at the outset,” and the donor has imposed upon the trustee or the court the duty of effectuating it, “the trust is called executory. All trusts are in a sense executory, because a trust cannot ba executed, except by conveyance, and therefore there is something always to be done.” The test is: Has the donor “left it to the court to make out from, general expressions what his intention is, or has he so defined that intention that you have nothing to do but to take 'the limitations he has given you, and to convert them into legal estates?” Pom. Eq. Juris. § 1001.
In our opinion the declaration of October 12, 1915, clearly set aside to the donee the sum stipulated to be paid when the land was sold, and hence when the land was sold the amount was converted thereby into a legal estate. Of course, as said in the original opinion, the trust or estate could have been defeated, but that fact does not, in our opinion, destroy what would otherwise constitute a complete trust.
The, motion for rehearing is overruled.