TRUSTS-POWER OF EQUITY TO RELIEVE AGAINST THE PROVISIONS OF THE TRUST INSTRUMENT

Authors

Abstract

Because of the amount of wealth involved and the prominence of the participants, the recent decision of Surrogate Foley in the surrogate's court of New York county in construing the will of the late Joseph Pulitzer has attracted much public attention. The decision is not without its interest to the legal profession. Mr. Pulitzer in his will expressly prohibited the trustees from selling under any circumstances whatever any stock of the Press Publishing Company, publishers of the "New York World" newspapers. Aside from the shares of stock left in trust the remaining shares are owned by the trustees, Mr. Pulitzer's sons, individually. The period during which the trust was to continue was during the life of each of the two youngest sons. Held that, notwithstanding the express prohibition in the will to the contrary, the surrogate court acting under its equitable jurisdiction had the power to modify the terms of the trust and to authorize the sale, an emergency of sufficient gravity having arisen to justify a sale. The decision was based on "the powers of a court of equity in emergencies to protect the beneficiaries of a trust from serious loss or a total destruction of a substantial asset of the corpus." Matter of Pulitzer, N. Y. L. J., Feb. 28, 1931.

Recommended Citation

TRUSTS-POWER OF EQUITY TO RELIEVE AGAINST THE PROVISIONS OF THE TRUST INSTRUMENT, 29 Mich. L. Rev. 950 (1931).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol29/iss7/38