Toner's Estate

Citations

• 260 Pa. 49
• 103 A. 541
• 1918 Pa. LEXIS 466

Syllabus

<p>Trusts — Testamentary trusts — Trusts for charitable purposes— Removal of trust fund to another county — Negligence of trustee— Petition for termination of trust — Refusal — Gy pres doctrine — Statutes — Reenactment of earlier statute — Repeal by implication of intermediate statute — Acts of April 26, 1855, P. L. 828; July 7, 1885, P. L. 259; May 9, 1889, P. L. 178, and May 28, 1895, P. L. Ilk.</p> <p>1. Courts, in their control over trustees who hold for charitable uses, exercise the broad visitorial and supervisory powers of the Commonwealth, and when in their opinion the interests of any particular trust can be served best by sending the fund into an adjacent county, they have ample power to do so, if such course is not expressly or impliedly forbidden by the donor or testator.</p> <p>2. A testator, leaving a will, which was probated in Westmoreland County, devised his residuary estate to a religious society to erect and maintain an industrial school, and further declared “One portion of said residuary estate will consist of my farm [describing it] upon which I direct that the said Benedictine Society shall erect and set up suitable buildings- and establish a school of an industrial character for the training and education of boys....... In case [the society]......shall not accept the devise......then the same is given......to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh for the same purpose as mentioned and for no other.” The society having refused the trust, the Catholic Bishop of Pittsburgh was appointed trustee and obtained leave to sell a part of the said real estate and to remove the institution which had been established thereon to the City of Pittsburgh. Certain next of kin of the testator petitioned that such decree be vacated. The lower court refused the petition without evidence. Petitioners contended that the court was bound to assume and find every material allegation of the petitioners in their favor, or else hear testimony thereon, and that the court had