Handout 02: the trust instrument
An in-world title document, not a run. A hundred and three years old, sealed in wax, and racing a clock its own drafter wrote.
Print it: handout-02-trust-instrument.pdf. The operative pages of a stack, the wax seal drawn at the foot, ready to hand over. Everything below is the same document as text.
DECLARATION OF TRUST
Made this fourteenth day of June, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven, by Adelia Rhodes Hollingsworth, of Santa Monica, California, hereinafter the Settlor, who does hereby convey the real property described in Schedule A to the trustees named below, to be held by them and by their successors upon the trusts hereinafter declared.
Schedule A. Those parcels lying south and west of the bluff line in the City of Santa Monica commonly known as the Belmar flats, being lots 12 and 13 of the Ocean Park tract, together with the improvements thereon.
First: the trusts declared. The trustees shall hold the said property for the benefit of the families in occupation at the date hereof and of their issue, in the shares set out in the Schedule of Beneficiaries held with this instrument, and shall not sell, encumber or convey any part of it save on the written concurrence of two thirds of the beneficiaries of full age.
Second: against perpetuities. Notwithstanding anything herein, every interest declared under this instrument shall vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after the death of the last survivor of the grandchildren of the Settlor living at the date hereof, being: Wardell R. Hollingsworth, Jr., aged nineteen years; Josephine H. Reece, aged seventeen years; DeWitt L. Hollingsworth, aged eleven years; Corrine A. Hollingsworth, aged eight years; Eunice Rhodes Purcell, aged six years; and Margaret Odile Hollingsworth, aged two years. Any interest not so vested shall fail, and the property shall thereupon be distributed as if the trusts had never been declared.
Third: the seal. This instrument is executed under the Settlor's seal, impressed in wax at its foot, and no claim to the vesting of any interest hereunder shall be allowed by the trustees or their successors except it be presented under the same seal. The Settlor directs that this instrument shall not be recorded in any public office, and shall be kept privately by the trustees, for the reason that the trusts hereby declared may require to be proved at a time when the public record is not available to the beneficiaries, or is not their friend.
[Twenty pages omitted: plats, schedules of improvements, and exhibits A through F.]
| Settlor | Adelia Rhodes Hollingsworth (signed, in brown ink, and sealed) |
| Trustees | Wilbur J. Ferriday · Cleota M. Rhodes · Emmanuel Sackville-Pike (signed) |
| Prepared by | Wilbur J. Ferriday, attorney at law, of Santa Monica |
| Witnesses | Two, signed and addressed on the reverse |
Notarial certificate. On the date first written above, before me personally appeared the persons named, known to me to be the persons described in and who executed the foregoing instrument, and acknowledged that they executed the same freely, the Settlor sealing it in my presence.
Rosalind V. Achebe, Notary Public in and for the County of Los Angeles. Commission expires 9 March 1961. Register entry 1957/2/118.
(seal)
At the foot of the sheet, a disc of dark red wax the size of a fifty-cent piece, cut deep by a signet: a monogram H under a crescent. It is an object, not a mark. It can be felt with a thumb, it casts a shadow, and it does not photograph.