Conservation Easement Amendments: Navigating Amendment Mechanisms, Overcoming Challenges and the Lack of an Amendment Provision
Recording of a 90-minute CLE webinar with Q&A
This CLE course will examine conservation easement amendments and the legal and practical issues that must be considered when assessing a proposed amendment to a perpetual conservation easement or developing a policy to govern an organization’s approach to amendments. The panel will also discuss recent developments and state attorney general involvement in amendments.
Outline
- Need and purpose for amendments
- Mechanisms for making amendments
- Strategies when conservation easement does not contain amendment provision
- Challenges and Issues
- Varying state positions
- Amendment policy
- Impact of IRS
Benefits
The panel will review these and other key issues:
- What are the laws that must be considered and the principles that should guide conservation easement amendments?
- What are the potential consequences of amending a conservation easement that counsel should consider before recommending that an organization agree to an amendment?
- How might the traditional approach to amendments and the traditional “standard” amendment clause be improved to minimize abuses and ensure protection of the public interest and investment in conservation easements?
Faculty
Thomas J. P. McHenry
Partner
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
Mr. McHenry practices general environmental law with an emphasis on air quality, hazardous waste, environmental... | Read More
Mr. McHenry practices general environmental law with an emphasis on air quality, hazardous waste, environmental diligence, land use and energy issues. He represents clients in negotiations with state and federal environmental agencies including air quality management districts, regional water quality control boards, the Department of Toxic Substances Control and the California and U.S. EPAs in the context of air quality, soil and groundwater cleanup, the California Environmental Quality Act, facility siting, permitting and other environmental and natural resources issues. Mr. McHenry is a Visiting Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College where he teaches environmental law and policy.
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Professor Nancy A. McLaughlin
University of Utah College of Law
Professor McLaughlin (J.D. University of Virginia) is the Robert W. Swenson Professor of Law. She is a member of... | Read More
Professor McLaughlin (J.D. University of Virginia) is the Robert W. Swenson Professor of Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and a member of the ABA’s Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law Section. Her research focuses on conservation easement, tax, and nonprofit governance issues and she writes and lectures extensively on these issues. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Utah Open Lands, a member of the Habitat Protection Advisory Committee of the Wildlife Land Trust, and a member of the Lands Protection Committee of Vital Ground, which works to protect grizzly bear habitat. She consults with land trusts, landowners, government entities, federal and state regulators, and others regarding conservation easements and nonprofit governance issues, and she blogs about conservation easement current developments on the Law Professors Nonprofit Law Blog. Her articles can be downloaded at ssrn.com/author=95358 and her faculty webpage is at http://bit.ly/1QNQw6x.
CloseAnn Schwing
Of Counsel
Best Best & Krieger
Ms. Schwing has served on the Land Trust Accreditation Commission since its creation in 2006. She serves on the Board... | Read More
Ms. Schwing has served on the Land Trust Accreditation Commission since its creation in 2006. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Land Trust of Napa County and was its President for over three years. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writing and received the Ninth Circuit Professionalism Award from the national Inns of Court Foundation in 2004. She has extensive experience with conservation easements as an Accreditation Commissioner, a conservation easement donor, an advisor to several land trusts, and a practicing attorney. She has authored or edited a number of conservation-easement related publications, including a database of conservation easement clauses available at http://www.bbklaw.com/?t=40&an=3775&format=xml, and several articles including Perpetuity Is Forever, Almost Always: Why It Is Wrong to Promote Amendment and Termination of Perpetual Conservation Easements, 37 Harv. Envt’l L. Rev. 217 (2013), available at http://harvardelr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Schwing.pdf. She also authored and annually updated California Affirmative Defenses from 1988-2015 and authored or edited other legal treatises on Open Meeting Laws, Securitization and Regulation of Money Managers. With her sister, she is the donor of the Archer Taylor Preserve, owned by the Land Trust of Napa County. She wrote an amicus brief in support of perpetuity in the Fourth Circuit in Belk on behalf of the Land Trust of Napa County and on her own behalf.
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