2010 Massachusetts Code
PART II REAL AND PERSONAL PROPERTY AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS
TITLE II DESCENT AND DISTRIBUTION, WILLS, ESTATES OF DECEASED PERSONS AND ABSENTEES, GUARDIANSHIP, CONSERVATORSHIP AND TRUSTS
CHAPTER 203 TRUSTS
Section 32 Findings of facts; power of court to order transfer or sale

[Text of section effective until July 1, 2011. Repealed by 2008, 521, Sec. 27. See 2008, 521, Sec. 44.]

Section 32. The court shall find the date of the disappearance or absconding of the absentee, and any other material facts. If the court finds that such disappearance has been continuous for more than fourteen years next preceding the filing of the petition, that upon the evidence presented the absentee has not been heard from or known of within such fourteen years, and that the facts found warrant a presumption of death, the court shall order the trust estate transferred to the persons as trustees to whom, and at the time or times and in the shares and proportions in which, it would, under the provisions of the trust of said property as set forth in the will, be distributed if said absentee had died within the commonwealth on the day fourteen years after the date of the disappearance or absconding, as found and recorded by the court. And by such order all the right, title and interest of said absentee in said trust estate and of all other persons, except those to whom as trustees said trust estate is to be turned over and paid in pursuance of said order, shall, as against the said trustee appointed under the will by the probate court, be barred, and no action, suit or petition in any form shall be begun by, or for the benefit of, such absentee or such other persons against the said trustee for or on account of said trust estate or its proceeds; and the court may authorize the trustee to sell at public or private sale the said trust estate or any part thereof and to convert it into money in order to make transfer thereof as aforesaid.