Fortunately, in such cases, it is often possible to persuade a judge to break the trust, since the consequences are so obviously contrary to the intent of the trust.
My papa did this, back in the 70’s: his Great-Grandfather had put the land into a trust, to be divided up among the male heirs, but with the restriction that none of the land could ever be sold. Unfortunately, the entire ranch was about to go up for auction because of taxes. My dad went before a judge, and not only broke the trust, so that some of the land could be sold to raise money to pay the back taxes so we could keep the rest (yay!) but also to arrange for the land to be divided among both male and female heirs (yay!) and retroactively (really big yay: several nice elderly ladies suddenly became land-owners!)
Re: Eminent domain: True, the state can take land for a public purpose, and parks and hospitals would qualify under this test. Private uses (such as the big employer I mentioned, or a new residential development) are often beyond a state’s eminent domain powers. (The Illinois Supreme Court recently struck down the governmental taking of land to provide needed parking for an important area employer, because the public purpose test was not met.) Bottom line is that a state cannot redistribute land at will, even if the end use is more desireable.
Yup. And the second thing that your judge did (adding the female heirs as beneficiaries) was to strike down a trust provision that was considered to be contrary to public policy, even if that’s what the settlor wanted. Offhand, I remember two famous examples of this. One was the provision in Cecil Rhodes’ will or trust which created the Rhodes Scholarships. Originally, these were limited to white males. This restriction was long ago eliminated.
Another was a 1800’s era bequest which created a public park (in Atlanta, IIRC) on the condition that it be for the use of whites only. When the city opened the park to all, the settlor’s heirs sues to get the land back. The court essentially rewote the will and rejected the heirs’ claim, even though it was pretty obvious that this was contrary to the dead guy’s intent.
In a broader sense, this concept is part of the overall policy of subordinating the will of someone no longer alive to the general public good.
