Summary

Horace Gray Jones v. Habersham — Opinion of the Court

A corporation may hold and execute a trust for charitable objects in accord with or tending to promote the purposes of its creation, although such as it might not, by its charter or by general laws, have authority itself to establish or to spend its corporate funds for. A city, for instance, may take a devise in trust to maintain a college, an orphan school, or an asylum.
Source: Wikisource

Horace Gray Jones v. Habersham — Opinion of the Court

If those conditions are valid, the devise over to the Savannah Female Orphan Asylum, an undoubted charity, will take effect; for as the estate is no more perpetual in two successive charities than in one charity, and as the rule against perpetuities does not apply to charities, it follows that if a gift is made to one charity in the first instance, and then over to another charity upon the happening of a contingency which may or may not take place within the limit of that rule, the limitation over to the second charity is good.
Source: Wikisource

Horace Gray Jones v. Habersham — Opinion of the Court

Reading the twenty-second clause in connection with the other parts of the will, and in the light of the attending facts, it is quite clear that the words 'take effect' are used by the testatrix as synonymous with or equivalent to the word 'executed,' with which they are coupled, and not as signifying that the devises and bequests shall not vest immediately, but only that they shall not be paid or carried out until the debt contracted by the testatrix for the construction of the Hodgson Memorial Hall shall have been paid out of her estate.
Source: Wikisource

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