The Endowment Act.

Provisions Under Which the Grant is Made.

An Act to advance, learning, the arts and sciences, and to promote the public welfare by providing for the conveyance, holding and protection of property, and the creation of trusts for the founding, endowment, erection and maintenance within this State of universities, colleges, schools, seminaries of learning, mechanical institutes, museums and galleries of art. (Approved March 9, 1885.)

The people of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

Section 1.	The provisions of this act shall be liberally construed with a view to effect its objects and promote its purposes; and in the construction thereof the singular number shall be deemed to include the plural, and the plural shall be deemed to include the singular number, and the masculine gender shall be deemed to include the feminine.
Sec. 2.	Any person desiring, in his life-time, to promote the public welfare by founding, endowing and having maintained within this State, a university, college, school, seminary of learning, mechanical institute, museum or gallery of art, or any or all thereof, may, to that end and for such purpose, by grant in page 4 writing, convey to a trustee, or to any number of trustees named in such grant (and to their successors), any property, real or personal, belonging to such person and situated or being within this State; provided, that if any such person be married and the property be community property, then both husband and wife must join in such grant.
Sec. 3.	The person making such grant may therein designate: (1) The nature, object and purposes of the institution or institutions to be founded, endowed and maintained. (2) The name by which it or they shall be known. (3) The powers and duties of the trustees, an J the manner in which they all account, and to whom, if accounting be required; but such powers and duties shall not be held to be exclusive of other powers and duties which may be necessary to enable such trustees to fully carry out the objects of such grant. (4) The mode and manner and by whom the successors to the trustee or trustees named in the grant are to be appointed. (5) Such rules and regulations for the management of the property conveyed as the grantor may elect to prescribe; but such rules shall, unless the grantor otherwise prescribe, be deemed advisory only, and shall not preclude such trustees from making such changes as new conditions may from time to time require. (6) The place or places where and the time when the buildings necessary and proper for the institution or institutions shall be erected, and the character and extent thereof. The persons making such grant may therein provide for all other things necessary and proper to carry out the purposes thereof, and especially may such person provide for the trades page 5 and professions which shall be taught in such institutions, and the terms upon which deserving scholars of the public and private schools of the various counties of this State may be admitted to all the privileges of such institutions as a reward for meritorious conduct and good scholarship, and also for maintaining free scholarship for children of persons who have rendered service to, or who have died in the service of this State, and also for maintaining free scholarship for children of mechanics, tradesmen and laborers who have died without leaving means sufficient to give such children a practical education, fitting them for the useful trades or arts, and also the terms and conditions upon which students in the public and private schools and other deserving persons may, without cost to themselves, attend the lectures of any university established, and also the terms and conditions upon which the museums and art galleries and conservatories of music connected with any such institution shall be open to all deserving persons without charge and without their becoming students of the institution.
Sec. 4.	The trustee or trustees named in such grant a d their successors may, in the name of the institution or institutions as designated in such grant, sue and defend in relation to the trust property and in relation to all matters affecting the institution or institutions endowed and established by such grant.
Sec. 5.	The person making such grant, by a provision therein, may elect, in relation to the property conveyed, and in relation to the erection, maintenance and management of such institution or institutions, to perform during his life all the duties and exercise all page 6 the powers which, by the terms of the grant, are enjoined upon and vested in the trustee or trustees therein named. If the person making such grant and making the election aforesaid be a married person, such person may further provide that if the wife of such person survive him, then such wife during her life may, in relation to the property conveyed and in relation to the erection, maintenance and management of such institution or institutions, perform all the duties and exercise all the powers which by the terms of the grant are enjoined upon and vested in the trustee or trustees therein named; and in all such cases the powers and duties conferred and imposed by such grant upon the trustee or trustees therein named shall be exercised and performed by the person making such grant, or by his wife, during his or her life, as the case may be; provided, however, that upon the death of such person or his surviving wife, as the case may be, such powers and duties shall devolve upon and shall be exercised by the trustees named in the grant and their successors.
Sec. 6.	The person making such grant may therein reserve the right to alter, amend or modify the terms and conditions thereof, and the trusts therein created, in respect to any of the matters mentioned or referred to in subdivisions 1 to 6 inclusive of section 2 hereof, and may also therein reserve the right, during the life of such person or persons, of absolute dominion over the personal property conveyed, and also over the rents, issues and profits of the real property conveyed, without liability to account therefor in any manner whatever, and without any liability over against the page 7 estate of such person; and if any such person be married, such person may in such grant further provide that if his wife survive him, then such wife, during her life, may have the same absolute dominion over such personal property and such rents, issues and profits, without liability to account therefor in any manner whatever, and without liability over against the estate of either of the spouses.
Sec. 7.	The person making such grant may therein provide that the Trustees named in the grant and their successors may, in the name of the institution or institutions, become the custodian of the person of minors, and when any such provision is made in a grant the Trustees and their successors may take such custody and control in the manner and for the time and in accordance with the provisions of sections 264 to 276 inclusive of the Civil Code of the State of California.
Sec. 8.	Any such grant may be executed, acknowledged and recorded in the same manner as is now provided by law for the execution, acknowledgment and recording of grants of real property.
Sec. 9.	No suit, action or proceeding shall be commenced or maintained by any person to set aside, annul or affect said conveyance, or to affect the title of the property conveyed, or the right to the possession, or to the rents, issues and profits thereof, unless the same be commenced within two years after the date of filing such grant for record; nor shall any defense be made to any suit, action or proceedings commenced by the Trustee or Trustees named in said grant, or their successors, privies or persons holding under them, page 8 which defense involves the legality of said grant, or affects the title to the property thereby conveyed, or the right to the possession of the rents, issues and profits thereof, unless such defense is made in a suit, action or proceeding commenced within two years after such grant shall have been filed for record.
Sec. 10.	The property conveyed by such grant shall not, after the lapse of two years from the date of the filing for record of the grant, be subject to forced sale under execution or judicial proceeding of any kind, against the grantor or his privies, unless the action under which the execution shall be issued or the proceedings under which the sale shall be ordered shall have been commenced within two years after such grant shall have been filed for record. Nor shall such property be subject to execution or forced sale unde any judgment obtained in any proceedings instituted within said two years, if there be other property of the grantor subject to execution or forced sale sufficient to satisfy such judgment; provided, nothing in this section contained shall be construed to affect, mechanics' or laborers' liens.
Sec. 11.	Any person or persons making any such grant may at any time thereafter, by last will or testament, devise and bequeath to the State of California all or any of the property, real or personal, mentioned in such grant, or in any supplemental grant, and such devise or bequest shall only take effect in case, from any cause whatever, the grant shall be annulled or set aside, or the trusts therein declared shall for any reason fail. Such devise and bequest is hereby permitted to be made, by way of assurance that the wishes of the page 9 grantor or grantors shall be carried out, and in the faith that the State, in case it succeeds to the property, or any part thereof, will, to the extent and value of such property, carry out, in respect to the objects and purposes of any such grant, all the wishes and intentions of the grantor or grantors; provided, that no wish, direction, act or condition, expressed, made or given by any grantor or grantors, under or by virtue of this act, as to religious instruction to be given in such school, college, seminary, mechanical institute, museum or gallery of art, or in respect to the exercise of religious belief on the part of any pupil or pupils of such school or institution of learning, shall be binding upon the State; nor shall the State enforce or permit to be enforced, or carried out, any such wish, direction, act or condition.
Sec. 12.	This act shall be in force from and after its passage.