35-21-848. Endowment care fund gifts and contributions. (1) (a) A mausoleum-columbarium authority that has established an endowment care fund may take, receive, and hold as a part of or incident to the fund any property, real, personal, or mixed, bequeathed, devised, granted, given, or otherwise contributed to it for its endowment care fund.

(b) A mausoleum-columbarium authority that has established endowment care may also take and hold any property bequeathed, granted, or given to it in trust to apply the principal or proceeds or income to any of the following purposes:

(i) improvement or embellishment of all or any part of the mausoleum or columbarium or any plot in it;

(ii) planting or cultivation of trees, shrubs, or plants in or around any part of the grounds on which the mausoleum-columbarium is situated;

(iii) special care or ornamenting of any part of any plot, section, corridor, or other portion of the mausoleum-columbarium;

(iv) any purpose or use not inconsistent with the purpose for which the mausoleum-columbarium was established or is maintained.

(2) The endowment care fund and all payments or contributions to it are expressly permitted as and for charitable and eleemosynary purposes. Endowment care is a provision for the discharge of a duty from the persons contributing to the persons interred and to be interred in the mausoleum-columbarium and a provision for the benefit and protection of the public by preserving and keeping mausoleum-columbariums from becoming unkept and places of reproach and desolation in the communities in which they are situated.

(3) A payment, gift, grant, bequest, or other contribution for general endowment care is not invalid by reason of any indefiniteness or uncertainty of the persons designated as beneficiaries in the instruments creating the trust, and the fund or any contribution to it is not invalid as violating any law against perpetuities or the suspension of the power of alienation of title to property.

History: En. Sec. 24, Ch. 283, L. 1999.