Salt Lake City, USA - The Utah Supreme Court on Friday said a polygamous sect waited too long to object to a state takeover of its historic property trust, rejecting its bid to undo changes made to the United Effort Plan Trust.
The court sided with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, which argued that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ignored numerous opportunities to participate in the changes to and management of the trust. The state argued that FLDS members’ attempt to intervene came too late — three years after the state took over the trust and two years after it was reformed.
FLDS members filed a petition last October that claimed their constitutional rights were violated when 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg eliminated the UEP Trust’s religious purpose and approved a secular system of oversight that was hostile to the faith.
The sect asked the court to stop sale of trust property, remove the court-appointed fiduciary overseeing the trust and overturn Lindberg’s revisions to the trust.
The UEP Trust, now valued at $110 million, was set up as a communal United Order in 1942 by Fundamentalist Mormons who settled the area that is now Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. It also has holdings in British Columbia. A majority of residents in the three communities are FLDS members.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff sought the trust’s takeover after its assets were targeted in civil lawsuits filed by former FLDS members. The state also alleged the FLDS trustees were mismanaging the trust.
In its filings with the high court, the state said sect members did not have standing to sue and that their petition was a “collateral attack” on the court and its appointed representative.
The state pointed out that FLDS members had resisted paying fees to aid court-appointed fiduciary Bruce R. Wisan’s management of the trust and previous FLDS trustees never complied with a court order to provide an inventory and accounting.
The state defended Wisan’s actions, saying he sought to subdivide the trust holdings to aid his ability to manage, collect property taxes and sell property. To undo the court actions taken over the past five years would be unfair to those who have relied on them, the state said.
Wisan has proposed selling some holdings, including two historic farms, to pay expenses and subdividing the trust land — actions the FLDS, who have refused to work with Wisan, oppose.
Since 2005, the trust has accumulated debt in the millions, money owed primarily to Wisan and his attorneys. Disputes between FLDS and former FLDS members in the community over land, homes and other trust property also have escalated since the court takeover.
In its appeal to the high court, the FLDS said Lindberg’s reformation of the trust set up a secular “overlord of an entire religious community.”
Once Lindberg eliminated the religious underpinnings, the trust should have been terminated and its holdings distributed to the remainder beneficiary — the FLDS church’s corporate entity — as called for in the trust’s bylaws.
But Lindberg said the trust could not default to the church because it sanctioned illegal practices such as polygamy, bigamy and “sexual activity between adults and minors.”
The FLDS argued Lindberg’s orders impinged on another of their religious tenets: Living in a “Holy United Order,” a version of communalism described in Mormon scripture. The tenet calls for participants to consecrate property, services, time and talents to build a communal, religious kingdom.
The sect argued that Wisan’s plan, backed by Lindberg, to subdivide the community interfered with this religiously based practice.