When the executive director of the Bronx Conservatory of Music failed to reach agreement with the school on an extension of his employment contract in 2020, he shortly thereafter founded the Bronx School of Music and sent emails to his personal contacts, former students, community friends, and donors, seeking to recruit them to his new endeavor. 

The trustee of a charitable trust has lost a substantial portion of its expenses when it made improper distributions of income to an organization no longer eligible to receive the income.  An appellate court in New York has affirmed the denial of fees ordered by a Surrogate’s Court.

The IRS has recently issued another new Technical Guide, this time on Fraternal Beneficiary Societies and Domestic Fraternal Societies under Tax Code sections 501(c)(8) and 501(c)(10).  The 36-page Guide updates and combines the Audit Technique Guide with other technical content. 

It covers the background of the laws, exemption issues, unrelated business income tax, deductibility of contributions, filing requirements and examination techniques. (TG 8)

Who gets the income from a Foundation when one of its designated beneficiaries is sold to a for-profit organization?  Even the most carefully drafted documents can be deemed ambiguous and ripe for later litigation.

The Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act provides the exclusive remedy for a worker injured on the job, even where the worker claims that the injury was caused by the intentional misconduct of the employer, the Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled. In reaching its conclusion, the Court has struggled with some of its own prior rulings and different rulings in different states.

The difficult conflict between a church seeking to use a controlled substance in its religious ceremonies and the government’s interest in restricting such use has been raised again in an appeal by the Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s denial of permission.  The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Church should have appealed directly to the Court of Appeals and not to a trial level district court in Florida.

The Supreme Court of Minnesota has affirmed two lower court decisions holding that a series of incidents involving a breach of trust can cumulatively justify removal of the trustee for “significant” breach of trust, even though some of the breaches alone might not justify removal.  It has affirmed the removal of one of the trustees of the Otto Bremer Trust, a $2 billion private foundation located in St. Paul, under the state’s version of the Uniform Trust Code.