351-year-old will sparks bitter dispute in Mass.

AP ^ | Feb 24, 2012 | RODRIQUE NGOWI

[newzjunkey]

BOSTON (AP) — With only eight days to live, a wealthy, ailing Massachusetts merchant wrote in his will 351 years ago that he was leaving a spectacular 35-acre seafront property for the benefit of public school children, decreeing the land should never be sold or wasted.

The dying wish of William Payne, one of the state's earliest settlers, created the nation's oldest charitable trust and eventually led tenants to build 167 cottages — most of them used by summer vacationers — on the land he left for the seaside city of Ipswich. The rent money has generated some $2.4 million to help fund public schools over the last 25 years.

Now, the trustees want to tear up the will, convert the property into condominiums and sell them to the tenants to settle a 2006 lawsuit filed by the tenants over rent increases. But hundreds of Ipswich residents have gone to court to block the settlement, saying it violates the sacred intent of Payne's will and shortchanges the schools...

[newzjunkey]

Someone's looking for a payday and William Payne's will be damned. I don't have much faith in the court doing the right thing here.

[ClearCase_guy]

[shrug] The will is a living document. If you read the penumbra, I’m pretty sure it mentions condominiums.

[NoGrayZone]

We truly are in that hand basket to hell.

[Reeses]

The school will make more money off the condo property taxes than they’re getting in rent. Legally a will only specifies who gets what, not what they can do with it.

[MSF BU]

Unless of course the property is transferred to nonprofits, in which case there will be no property tax.

[RobbyS]

Wasn't it, in effect, bequeathed to the Commonwealth— I mean the people not the government?

[Noob1999]

Somewhere “scrupulous” lawyers will find a case for eminent domain.

[pabianice]

As soon as I saw Martha Coakley's name I realized that this is just one more Pomegranate* scheme to defraud land from its rightful owners.

* Pomegranate: red on the outside, gold on the inside, the perfect grasping, lying, communist hiding as a "Liberal"

[Jack Hammer]

Unbridled and selfish greed; it could - and in this case, will - screw up a wet dreeam.

[colorado tanker]

The article is slanted to the tenants. The tenants, some of whom are trustees, have been paying below market rents for years, with little money going to the schools. This settlement would produce a lot more for the schools.