Steeves v. Stiles

[131]Opinion

COBEY, J. Claimants, Betty Stiles and Barbara Simmons, nieces and sole heirs-at-law of Arthur J. Connolly, deceased, appeal from an order, upon a petition for instructions filed by the executor of the last will of Connolly, determining Ethical Culture Society of Los Angeles to be the successor charitable trustee of the residue of the estate of Connolly.1 The appeal lies. (Prob. Code, § 1240.)

This appeal presents the fundamental question of what was Connolly’s intent in leaving his entire estate of cash and securities by will specifically to World’s Agnostics Groups (WAG), a nonprofit California corporation.2 (See Prob. Code, § 101.) Claimants assert that because of the specific designation of the legatee and because no technical words of trust were used, the testator intended only a gift to WAG and nothing more and WAG being no longer a viable corporation, the gift to it failed and claimants are entitled to receive the residue of the testator’s estate by intestate succession pursuant to Probate Code section 225.3 The Attorney General, as the supervisor of charitable trusts in this state, rejoins that [132]the legacy to WAG constituted a charitable trust and upon the failure of the original trustee, WAG, to survive, the court properly appointed a successor charitable trustee pursuant to the cy pres doctrine.

Thus, the basic disagreement between claimants and the Attorney General is over the nature of Arthur Connolly’s testamentary gift. To decide this question, we must examine the nature of the donee. WAG was a corporation formed about a year before the testator’s death. The testator, a single man without children, was one of its three incorporators and one of its three initial directors. According to its articles of incorporation its specific and primary purpose was “to further the cause of agnosticism throughout the world.”

Claimants contend that WAG was not a charitable corporation because this purpose was not a charitable purpose.4 True, this purpose cannot be said to be a religious one (see Webster’s New Intemat. Diet. (3d ed. -1966) p. 1918), but we regard it as an educational one. Agnosticism is the intellectual viewpoint of an agnostic—one who neither affirms nor denies the existence of a Supreme Being or ultimate cause because he regards the determination of that Being’s existence as unknowable. (Id., p. 42.) Stated otherwise, agnosticism teaches that one aspect of the human condition is the inability of human beings to know whether or not God exists.