## Facts

- Sarah Converse died in 1849 owning land in Woburn and leaving a will.
- She devised the land to the Independent Baptist Church of Woburn “so long as” it maintained its then-current religious beliefs and continued as a church.
- The will stated that if the church dissolved or changed/abandoned its religious sentiments, the land should go to the testatrix’s other named legatees in equal shares.
- The will gave Converse’s husband a life estate in the land if he survived her; he died in 1864.
- The will made ten monetary legacies and then left the residue to the same named legatees, excluding the church, effective after the husband’s death (with a life use to the husband if he survived).
- The church ceased to continue as a church in 1939.
- A receiver sold the land after the church ceased operations, and an equity proceeding sought a determination of ownership and entitlement to the sale proceeds.
- A single justice ruled that the church held a determinable fee, that the executory gift over was void under the rule against perpetuities, and that the residuary gift was also void, resulting in distribution to the testatrix’s heirs at law.
- The residuary legatees appealed.

## Issues

1. What estate did the church take under the devise conditioned on continuing as a church with specified beliefs?
2. Whether the gift over to the named legatees upon the church’s dissolution or doctrinal change is void for remoteness under the rule against perpetuities.
3. If the gift over is void, whether the interest remaining in the testatrix’s estate passes under the residuary clause to the residuary legatees (or their successors) or instead passes to heirs at law.

## Decision

- The court held the church took a determinable fee.
- The court held the executory devise over to the named legatees upon termination of the determinable fee was void for remoteness under the rule against perpetuities.
- The court rejected the ruling that the residuary clause was void for remoteness as applied to the interest remaining in the testatrix’s estate.
- The court held that the proceeds belonged to those representing the residuary legatees, not to the heirs at law.
- The decree was affirmed in part and reversed in part.

## Legal Principles

- A devise “so long as” a grantee maintains a specified use or status creates a determinable fee that terminates automatically upon the stated event.
- An executory limitation following a determinable fee is void under the rule against perpetuities if the determinable fee may continue beyond the perpetuities period, leaving the vesting of the future interest too remote.
- When an executory gift over fails under the rule against perpetuities, the interest remaining in the testator’s estate is a reversionary interest (possibility of reverter) that exists at death and can pass immediately under a residuary clause.
- A residuary clause may carry the testator’s reversionary interest in property subject to a determinable fee, so that the residuary beneficiaries (or their successors) take possession when the determinable fee ends.

## Conclusion

The court treated the church’s interest as a determinable fee that ended when the church ceased in 1939; although the will’s executory gift over on that termination was void under the rule against perpetuities, the testatrix’s retained reversionary interest passed at death through the residuary clause, entitling the residuary legatees’ successors to the sale proceeds rather than the heirs at law.


Brown v. Indep. Baptist Church of Woburn, 325 Mass. 645, 91 N.E.2d 922 (Mass. 1950)