Trusts Veer From Donors Wishes

This article in the New York Times reports on a trend of trusts that veer off of the wishes of the donors when there are no family members to oversee the trust, and the banks that held the trusts were bought by global banks.

Donors Gone, Trusts Veer From Their Wishes

By Stephanie Strom

Published: September 29, 2007

When Mamie Dues died in 1974, she left the fortune her husband, Cesle, had made in movie theaters in El Paso to a foundation controlled by a local bank there. The couple had no heirs and no other family.

"They lived modestly in a little apartment house and spent most of their time watching TV," recalled J. Sam Moore Jr., a lawyer who drew up their wills. "They took little or no interest in civic affairs, but they did feel strongly about this place, and they mandated that their foundation be concentrated on crippled children in El Paso, and in Texas more broadly."

Three decades later, however, the foundation's legal address is in Delaware, and a global bank, JPMorgan, manages it from an office in Dallas. While its assets have grown to almost $6 million, from $5.1 million in 2000, its giving has fallen sharply, and the local group that once decided who would receive its money no longer has a say in its operations.

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