N.Y. Religious Corporations Law § 202: Trusts for Shakers and Friends

§ 202. Trusts for Shakers and Friends. All deeds or declarations of

trust of real or personal property, executed and delivered before

January first, eighteen hundred and thirty, or since May fifth, eighteen

hundred and thirty-nine, to any person in trust for any United Society

of Shakers, or heretofore executed and delivered to any person or

persons in trust for any meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or

any of the purposes thereof, and the legal estates, interests and trusts

purported to be conveyed, created or declared thereby, shall be valid.

Trusts of real or personal property, for the benefit and use of the

members of any United Society of Shakers, or of any meeting of the

Religious Society of Friends, or any of the purposes thereof, may

hereafter be created, according to the religious constitution of such

society of Shakers, or the regulations and rules of discipline of such

Society of Friends. Such deeds or declarations of trust, heretofore or

hereafter executed and delivered, shall vest in the trustees the legal

estates and interests purported to be conveyed or declared thereby, to

and for the uses and purposes declared therein; and such legal estates

and trusts, and all legal authority with which the original trustees

were vested by virtue of their appointment and conferred powers, shall

descend to their successors in office or trust, who may be chosen in

conformity to the constitution of such society, or the directions of

such meeting. In case of the death of all the trustees of any trust for

the benefit of any meeting of the Religious Society of Friends or any of

the purposes thereof, heretofore appointed, or who may be hereafter

appointed by virtue of this section, any such meeting may appoint a

trustee or trustees in place of such person or persons, and the person

or persons thus appointed by such meeting shall succeed to, and be

invested with, all the powers, rights and duties conferred by this

section and the deed or declaration of trust upon the trustee or

trustees. In case of the consolidation of two or more meetings of the

Religious Society of Friends into one meeting, all real and personal

property held in trust for either or any of the meetings so

consolidated, or any of the purposes thereof, shall continue to be

vested in the trustees holding the same at the time of such

consolidation, until their successors shall be chosen as above provided.

Such consolidated meeting shall have the same rights, powers and duties

in respect to such property, estates and trusts and in respect to the

appointment of such trustees and their successors as the meetings so

consolidated or either of them previously had. This section does not

impair or diminish the rights of any person, meeting or association

claiming to be a meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, which such

person, meeting, or association claiming to be a meeting, had to any

real or personal property held in trust for the use and benefit of any

meeting of such society, before the division of such society which took

place at the annual meeting held in the city of New York in May,

eighteen hundred and twenty-eight. An incorporated or unincorporated

society or meeting of Shakers or the Religious Society of Friends may

take and hold property of the value or yearly income permitted by

statute to a corporation other than a stock corporation. No person shall

be a trustee at the same time of more than one society of Shakers or

meeting of Friends. A society of Shakers includes all persons of the

religious belief of the people called Shakers, resident within the same

county.