An appellate court in Pennsylvania has affirmed a trial court decision refusing to invade the principal of a charitable trust to help a beneficiary avoid insolvency.  It has said that the charity’s financial position is its own responsibility and distribution of principal would be contrary to the donor’s intent.

The Supreme Court of Oregon has overruled a Tax Court decision and held that a vacant lot acquired by an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity and being held for the construction of a house for a low-income family is exempt from real estate tax even before construction has been started.  The Tax Court had held that the property was not “actually and exclusively occupied or used” by Habitat in its charitable purposes.

Is the Culinary Institute of America liable when one of its instructors injures a child in a traffic accident while driving home from work?

The executor of a decedent’s estate in New York has been surcharged $630,000, plus 6% interest, for selling the decedent’s residence for only about half of its fair market value, depriving four Lutheran charities and Adelphi University of the value in their remainder interest.

A federal District Court in Utah has ruled that an association lacks standing to claim that Utah’s statute requiring fundraising counsel to register with the state if their clients solicit charitable contributions in Utah is unconstitutional “as applied.”  The Court has left standing a prior ruling in the case that a fundraising counsel threatened with penalties if it didn’t register has standing to contest the requirement.  (American Charities for Reasonable Fundraising Regulation v.

A portion of a cemetery parcel improved with a single family residence was not “dedicated to burial of dead,” not used exclusively in the administration of the cemetery and therefore not exempt from real estate tax, an appellate court in Massachusetts has affirmed.

An attorney has been disbarred by the Utah Supreme Court for failing to disgorge a $30,000 fee after being ordered to do so by a trial court in 2008.  The issue arose during a dispute when elements of the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation split off to found a new Utah Down Syndrome Association and the attorney represented the Association officers in unsuccessful litigation against the Foundation.