Quantcast
Get breaking news alerts via email

Click here to manage your alerts
Fiduciary fires back in polygamous sect's property battle
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2009, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The fiduciary who oversees a polygamous sect's property trust is asking a Utah judge to hold sect leader Warren S. Jeffs, a dozen sect members, FLDS firms and the community's local governments in contempt for trying to intervene in the 4-year-old court case.

Bruce R. Wisan also wants the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, its representatives and members barred from its "continued blitzkrieg" of legal filings "without the Court's permission."

In a court filing, Wisan's attorney describes the attempts to join the case "a watershed event." But those FLDS leaders and others failed to comply with court orders to turn over financial records related to the United Effort Plan Trust, the document says. By filing to intervene in the case and stop such trust actions as the sale of a historic farm, they also violated a stand down in litigation ordered by 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg in November 2008, it says.

The filing names the church's corporate business entity and states that Jeffs is the president. Jeffs resigned from that position in 2007, but is still listed as holding that position in corporate documents.

Wisan said the FLDS' refusal to work with him, by Jeffs' orders, has added to his expense and been "crippling" to the trust's management. The fiduciary asks Lindberg to order the former trustees who now want to join the case to turn over documents, accountings and records he maintains will "conclusively establish a record of the former trustees' abandonment of the trust and subsequent efforts to completely frustrate the fiduciary in his court-appointed duties."

Article Tools

 Print Friendly