## Facts

- Beryl H. Buck’s will created a charitable trust to be used exclusively for charitable, religious, or educational purposes in Marin County, California.
- When Buck died, the trust consisted largely of stock worth about $7–$10 million.
- Over roughly a decade, the stock appreciated sharply and the trust grew to about $340 million.
- Because the trust was subject to federal payout requirements, it was expected to distribute at least 5% of its assets annually (about $17 million based on the increased value).
- Marin County was among California’s more affluent counties, and the trustees asserted that distributing such a large annual amount solely within Marin County made it difficult to identify sufficient qualifying charitable needs and programs consistent with the trust’s terms.
- The trustees (including the San Francisco Foundation in its role administering distributions) petitioned the probate court to modify the trust under the cy pres doctrine to permit use of trust funds for charitable purposes in neighboring counties, arguing that the Marin-only instruction had become impracticable.
- The California Attorney General participated to represent the public’s interest in enforcement of charitable trusts, and Marin County interests opposed loosening the geographic restriction.
- The probate court addressed both whether cy pres justified changing the geographic limitation and what administrative structure should govern distribution of the trust’s large annual payouts.

## Issues

1. Whether the Marin County–only restriction in Buck’s charitable trust had become impossible or impracticable to carry out, justifying cy pres modification to permit distributions outside Marin County.
2. Whether the trust’s large post-death increase in value, combined with required annual payouts, supported a finding that compliance with the Marin-only direction could no longer be carried out as written.
3. If broad cy pres relief was not warranted, what court-ordered administrative or distribution provisions were appropriate to carry out the charitable trust consistent with Buck’s intent.

## Decision

- The court declined to grant the requested cy pres modification that would have broadly expanded permissible distributions beyond Marin County.
- The court concluded that the trust’s appreciation and the trustees’ claimed difficulty identifying enough local charitable opportunities did not establish the level of impossibility or impracticability required to rewrite the trust’s geographic limitation.
- The court retained Marin County as the required geographic focus for the trust’s charitable use.
- The court also entered detailed administrative and distribution directives to govern implementation of the trust in light of its size, including appointment of a successor distribution trustee and requirements that a portion of annual income be directed to a small number of major Marin County projects whose benefits could extend beyond the county.

## Legal Principles

- Cy pres permits judicial modification of a charitable trust only when the specified charitable purpose or restriction has become illegal, impossible, or impracticable to fulfill, and the court can direct property to a use as near as possible to the donor’s intent.
- A donor’s clear geographic restriction in a charitable trust is a material expression of intent and is not set aside merely because trustees think broader spending would be preferable or easier.
- Post-death growth in a charitable fund and the resulting scale of required distributions do not, by themselves, establish impracticability; the proponent of cy pres bears the burden to show that the restriction cannot be carried out in practice under the governing standard.
- Even when a court refuses to expand a charitable trust’s purpose or geographic scope, it may issue administrative and governance orders to effectuate the trust consistent with the settlor’s expressed charitable direction.

## Conclusion

The probate court refused to use cy pres to remove or relax Beryl Buck’s directive that trust funds be used exclusively for charitable, religious, or educational purposes in Marin County, holding that dramatic appreciation and high annual payout obligations did not make the Marin-only restriction impossible or impracticable; instead, the court kept the geographic limitation and addressed implementation through court-ordered governance and distribution provisions designed to carry out the trust on its new financial scale.


In re Estate of Buck, No. 23259, Reprinted in 21 U.S.F. L. Rev. 691, 1986-87 (1986)