Remainder Interest Vests at Date of Trust Termination, Not When Trust Property Later Distributed

The testator’s will created a trust for her niece, terminating on the earlier of the exhaustion of the trust principal or the niece’s death. The trust was not exhausted at the niece’s death and the trust property therefore was to be divided among a number of beneficiaries, including a Methodist church which was dissolved after the niece’s death but before the distribution of the trust property. The court in In re Will of Keys, 193 P.3d 490 (Kan. Ct. App. 2008), held first, that the church’s interest was contingent on the trust not being exhausted at the niece’s death; second, the interest vested at the niece’s death; and third, that the remainder interest belonged to the church body which under church law succeeded to all of the dissolved church’s property.