N.Y. judge rules church separating from PCUSA can keep its property
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 24, 2006
A state judge in New York’s Supreme Court system has ruled that the Hudson River Presbytery has no claim to the property of the now independent Church of Ridgebury.
The decision was a big, if temporary, victory for a tiny congregation – membership 29 at the end of 1995, according to PCUSA records – that voted unanimously on Jan. 10, 2005, to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The leaders of the congregation announced their departure by warning that any attempt by the presbytery or the denomination to claim the church’s property “will be deemed slander of title, compensable by damages, and any entry onto Ridgebury Church property by any officer and/or agent of the Presbytery of Hudson River shall be deemed criminal trespass.”
The presbytery and the Rev. Richard H. Spierling, chairman of the presbytery’s administrative commission, were undeterred. They filed a lawsuit claiming that the property belongs to the denomination. The complaint named as the defendants individual trustees, a denominationally recommended strategy intended to warn elders and trustees that they could incur personal liability amounting to thousands of dollars each if they persisted in their local church ownership claims.
But New York Judge John K. McGuirk ruled on behalf of the congregation on August 15, issuing a 10-page decision that declared that the Ridgebury congregation was not obligated to submit to the hierarchical claims of the denomination.
Deciding the case under “neutral principles of law,” as recommended by the U.S. Supreme Court, McGuirk turned aside the PCUSA’s argument that it is the rightful owner of the property under the denomination’s property trust requirement in chapter 8 of the Book of Order.
Under New York law, McGuirk said, “It is hornbook [rudimentary] property law that only the owner of real property can convey an interest in the property; B cannot create a future interest in A’s property without A’s consent.” McGuirk said the congregation’s property deeds never mentioned the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Attorneys for the presbytery and the PCUSA argued that Ridgebury silently assented to the trust clause for 25 years before voting to leave the denomination.
McGuirk acknowledged that there was some legitimacy to that argument. However, he ruled, “mere silence and continuing its membership in the denominational church, absent more, is an insufficient expression of an intent to express a trust.”
His ruling cited section 13 of New York’s Restatement of Trusts: “[a] trust is created only if the settler properly manifests an intention to create a trust relationship.” He also cited a comment on that section: “[t]he manifestation of intention requires an external expression of intention as distinguished from undisclosed intention.”
“The only affirmative actions on defendants’ part on this subject since 1981 were their explicit manifestation not to hold their property for the benefit of plaintiffs,” McGuirk said.
The attorney for Ridgebury is Don Nichol of Jacobowitz & Gubits, Walden, N.Y., who also represented Circleville Presbyterian Church during its separation process from the Presbytery of Hudson River. After a 72-2 congregational vote in December 2002 to leave the PCUSA, Circleville negotiated its dismissal by paying the presbytery $112,000 – then the equivalent of $1,120 per member. Circleville is now affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Some of Nichol’s strategies for litigation include a historic overview of Presbyterian understanding of property ownership. In a commentary published recently on The Layman Online, Nichol cites statements in The Book of Confessions that he says support a local congregation’s ownership of its property when those claims are challenged by the denomination. The Book of Confessions and the Book of Order together make up the Constitution of the PCUSA.
Presbyterians have always considered the highest authority is Scripture, with the confessions second and the Book of Order third.
Nichol was on vacation Thursday and could not be reached for comment.
The presbytery posted a copy of the decision on its Web site and a brief note saying that the “Presbytery Council will now be reviewing options. Please keep all parties in your prayers for the peace, unity and purity of the Church.”
It was signed by Spierling, a minister who was once excluded from membership in the Presbytery of Palisades in a disciplinary action; Hudson River’s new executive presbyter, former General Assembly Moderator Susan Andrews; and the presbytery’s stated clerk, Harriet Sandmeier.
The Layman Online contacted Spierling’s church office today and asked that he return the call. He did not.