Krauczunas v. Hoban

Citations

• 221 Pa. 213
• 70 A. 740
• 1908 Pa. LEXIS 467

Syllabus

<p>Trusts and trustees — Adverse holding — Executed use — Religious congregation — Title to property.</p> <p>It results from the act giving to religious societies legal capacity to hold real estate, that a conveyance of real estate to a trustee for the use of a particular congregation, constitutes an executed legal estate in the congregation itself, to be used by it for such purposes as the law allows.</p> <p>In such a case the congregation may at a subsequent duly convened meeting direct the trustee, to whom the property had been conveyed, to execute a deed of conveyance to other persons named as trustees, and the trustee cannot set up as a ground for refusing to execute such a deed that he is in fact the bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, of which the congregation in question is a part, and that under the rules, discipline and usages of such church he holds the title to the property in question.</p> <p>A trustee while occupying a place of trust and confidence cannot be heard to set up an adverse holding.</p> <p>Ecclesiastical rules and regulations, except as they are aided by légal conveyance, are ineffectual to divest any owner of his property.</p> <p>The Act of April 26, 1855, P. L. 328, confirms in unequivocal terms to every religious society, incorporated or unincorporated, the absolute ownership of its property subject only to the condition that it shall not divert it from the uses and purposes and trusts to which it may have been lawfully dedicated.</p>