The provision for an annual dinner for the charity trustees did not undermine the body’s charitable status.
Jenkins J summarised the law applicable where ‘a fund or the income thereof is directed to be applied primarily to purposes which are not charitable and as to the balance or residue to purposes which are charitable’, saying: ‘[T]he result of the authorities appears to be: (a) that where the amount applicable to the non-charitable purpose can be quantified the trusts fail quoad that amount but take effect in favour of the charitable purpose as regards the remainder; (b) that where the amount applicable to the non-charitable purpose cannot be quantified the trusts both charitable and non-charitable wholly fail because it cannot in such a case be held that any ascertainable part of the fund or the income thereof is devoted to charity; (c) that there is an exception to the general rule in what are commonly known as the ‘Tomb cases’ that is to say, cases in which there is a primary trust to apply the income of a fund in perpetuity in the repair of a tomb not in a church, followed by a charitable trust in terms extending only to the balance or residue of such income, the established rule in cases of this particular class being to ignore the invalid trust for the repair of the tomb and treat the whole income as devoted to the charitable purpose; and (d) that there is an exception of a more general character where as a matter of construction the gift to charity is a gift of the entire fund or income subject to the payments thereout required to give effect to the non-charitable purpose, in which case the amount set free by the failure of the non-charitable gift is caught by and passes under the charitable gift.’
Jenkins J
[1948] Ch 747
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Re Tuck’s Settlement Trusts CA 1-Nov-1977
By his will, Sir Adolph Tuck sought to ensure that his successors should be Jewish, and stated that the arbitrators of this must be the Chief Rabbi of his community. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Charity
Updated: 13 December 2021; Ref: scu.510141