Legal Considerations Regarding Amendment to Conservation

A sample from the accredited Hudson Highlands Land Trust.

This guidance covers Practice 11H: Amendments.

Land Trust Standards and Practices, Practice 11H: Amendments, includes three elements. This 20-minute module covers the first element:

1. Adopt and follow a written policy or procedure addressing conservation easement amendments that is consistent with the Land Trust Alliance Amendment Principles

This is a template for a conservation easement amendment policy that was reviewed and approved by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission.

Part two of this two-part article identifies the fundamental elements of law and the process of law to topple the Internal Revenue Service’s card construct, and awaken and return everyone to the world above ground.

This guidance document discusses the specific steps when accepting assignment of a conservation easement.

Part one of this two-part article examines how the Internal Revenue Service lures the land conservation community and the Tax Court into Wonderland distortions, and the precarious tower of cards upon which its legal theories rest.

An IRS memo states that an amendment clause will not necessarily cause an easement to fail to satisfy the requirements of section 170(h).

At the heart of tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) is a requirement that a charity be operated for a public, rather than a private, benefit. The conundrum that is private benefit has successfully withstood fifty years of efforts at explication. This outline will review those efforts.