2012 Connecticut General Statutes
Title 47 - Land and Land Titles
Chapter 821 - Land Titles
Section 47-2 - Charitable uses.

All estates granted for the maintenance of the ministry of the gospel, or of schools of learning, or for the relief of the poor, or for the preservation, care and maintenance of any cemetery, cemetery lot or monuments thereon, or for any other public and charitable use, shall forever remain to the uses to which they were granted, according to the true intent and meaning of the grantor, and to no other use whatever.

(1949 Rev., S. 7082.)

Any organization to be classed as a charitable organization under the statute must have the administration of charity as one of its ultimate purposes. A Masonic lodge which practices charity incidental to the accomplishment of its ultimate purpose is not such a charity. 4 CS 14. Testamentary trust for the erection and maintenance of a cemetery chapel to the memory of the testator’s mother is not invalid because it is not limited to the period of perpetuities. 7 CS 251. Trust once established for any particular religious or charitable use remains for that use forever and to no other use whatever. 12 CS 352. Not essential to charitable character of use that only the mendicant, impecunious or poor receive its benefactions. 13 CS 372. This section passed in 1684. Sometimes variously known as the “Statute of Elizabeth” or as “The Statute of Charitable Uses” or as “The Statute of 1702”. 17 CS 169. Applicability of cy pres doctrine or doctrine of approximation depends on proof of general dominant charitable intent to which particular expressed intent is secondary. 27 CS 176. Since adherence to settlors’ religious limitation would defeat their dominant intent, doctrine of approximation should be invoked to allow trustees to ignore limitation. 28 CS 468.