The question of whether donative intent is binding often arises in local church leadership discussions. However, donative intent rarely is a factor in church litigation because it is rarely placed at issue by the donor.
In Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Monastery v Romanian Orthodox Episcopate, Slip Op. (Mich. App. 2019), the trial court decided based on donative intent that the attempt to transfer the property away from the hierarchical denomination was successful. The Court of Appeals reversed. The court of appeals held that the because the warranty deed gifting the property to the denomination did not preserve the donative intent to provide a life estate to the Plaintiff the donative intent was not relevant. (The trial court also failed to consider the impact of the Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine, probably because of the donative intent issue, and was reversed on that as well. Hierarchical denominations retain their church governance sovereignty.)
Donative intent is not preserved simply because the donor tells a church leadership of the intent. Once the gift is made, the donative intent is irrelevant if not preserved in a manner that restricts the ownership or disposition of the ownership of the gift. While among church leaders there are often many urban legends about the binding effect of donative intent, the truth is that it is usually no more binding than the church leadership’s voluntary decision to do so. Fungible gifts like cash lose any connection to the donative intent as soon as the cash is deposited in a church bank account.
Church Litigation Update 