Shurtleff issues ultimatum to FLDS over trust

SALT LAKE CITY — An attorney for the FLDS Church is blasting Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff over a letter that gives the sect 30 days to settle an ongoing dispute over a multimillion-dollar trust or face consequences.

"It's politics, and I'm here to say I don't want him to get away with that," said attorney Rod Parker, who added the letter "comes right out of left field."

"(Shurtleff) knows that's not an honest letter," Parker said, "and he needs to step up and take responsibility for what's going on."

Shurtleff and leaders of the Fundamentalist LDS Church have been in ongoing negotiations for the past six months, seeking to settle a nearly 5-year-old dispute over the United Effort Plan Trust.

The $100 million-plus trust holds most of the homes and property in Hildale, Utah; Colorado City, Ariz.; and Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada — communities long dominated by members of the FLDS Church. It was seized by Utah's courts in 2005 after state attorneys alleged that FLDS leader Warren Jeffs — then a fugitive from Arizona criminal charges — had used trust assets for personal benefit and left it vulnerable to liquidation from default judgments in civil lawsuits filed in 2004.

In a Jan. 26 letter to three FLDS attorneys, Shurtleff said he expected their clients to accept a settlement proposed by Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed special fiduciary of the trust. He set a Feb. 26 deadline for such a settlement.

"If your clients are not willing to accept this offer, I will assume that they have no intention, or at least do not have the ability, to resolve this matter by settlement and that future settlement negotiations would be futile," Shurtleff wrote.

He added that failure to reach a settlement by Feb. 26 would indicate that he should "support the rule of law" and join Wisan and the Arizona Attorney General's Office in their efforts to carry out previous court orders regarding the trust.

"It is not politics," assistant Utah attorney general Jerrold Jensen said Wednesday. "What's prompted this is their refusal to make any movement toward settlement. All they want to do is file motion after motion with the courts."

Jensen said one of Shurtleff's main concerns is the money that is being spent on attorneys' fees. Those fees, he said, are being paid for by the same people — FLDS members are issued assessments that pay for their own attorneys, and they also face the sale of UEP Trust land to pay for Wisan's attorneys.