No easy solutions in polygamous church land fight

More than four years after Utah sought to protect assets in a polygamous church's land trust, the state's plan seems to have backfired — the trust is mired in debt, tangled in lawsuits and some of the land that was supposed to be preserved is poised for court-ordered sale.

"It's in terrible shape and that wasn't supposed to be the case," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

The $100 million-plus United Effort Plan Trust holds most of the homes and property in Hildale, Utah, Colorado City, Ariz., and Bountiful, British Columbia, communities long dominated by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).

The Utah courts seized the trust in 2005 after state attorneys alleged church president 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.

"We are stepping up to protect the interests of the beneficiaries because Warren Jeffs has not," Shurtleff said at the time.

The intervention was supposed to be simple and temporary, Shurtleff said. The goal was to get an accounting of trust assets and install a new board of trustees that would treat church members more fairly than Jeffs. Among the complaints against the polygamist leader: he used trust assets to control his followers, rewarding the most faithful with the best homes and land.

But the task of managing the trust has become anything but temporary.

Court-appointed accountant Bruce Wisan was handed control of the trust, but had no books or property records, no cash for management duties and little cooperation from FLDS members. Most remain faithful to Jeffs despite his arrest and incarceration on a 2007 criminal conviction on Utah charges of rape as an accomplice.

Wisan's efforts — from collecting property taxes to platting a subdivision of the twin border towns of Hildale and Colorado City — have been met with resistance or silence.

Wisan has had to fight the Colorado City town marshal's office to ensure court orders were followed and has bickered with the city councils of both towns over a proposed subdivision. Currently more than a half-dozen lawsuits are pending, land sales are held up and without a source of income, trust debts — which didn't exist before state intervention — have mounted to nearly $3 million. Most of that is owed to Wisan and his attorneys.