02/21/95
CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558
STANFORD -- Another chapter in the Christian Science bequest case closed last week when Stanford received approximately $5 million from the trust of Eloise Mabury Knapp.
Distribution of the Knapp trust follows a court-approved settlement in 1993 that allocated 53 percent to the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, while Stanford and Museum Associates, the support group for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, would each receive 23.5 percent.
That agreement capped nearly two years of litigation over the estate of Knapp. The trust of her sister, Bella Mabury, subject to the same settlement, is still on appeal.
Knapp's estate currently is worth approximately $21 million and Mabury's is about $75 million. Depending on the outcome of the Mabury trust appeal, Stanford could receive approximately $17 million more.
In approving the settlement agreement of the three charitable organizations in December 1993, a Los Angeles superior court judge dismissed the claims of eight distant relatives who filed objections the previous month to the Mabury settlement.
Iris Brest, Stanford associate general counsel, said that briefs for the appeal are expected to be filed in April and May, after which there will be a hearing.
Knapp and Mabury named the church as their beneficiary, provided it met certain requirements, with Stanford and Museum Associates as beneficiaries if it did not. Those three parties reached agreement on a settlement of the trusts, to which certain distant relatives objected.
Eloise Mabury Knapp had no direct ties to the university, but her sister, Bella Mabury, enrolled on opening day, Oct. 1, 1891, and attended for one year. Mabury died in 1964 and Knapp in 1973.
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