FLDS leadership asks court for new trust manager

The governing body of a southern Utah-based polygamous church is asking a judge to remove a court-appointed accountant from his job managing the group's land trust.

Leaders of the Fundamentalist LDS Church object to Bruce Wisan's management of the United Effort Plan Trust and want a judge to appoint someone "less controversial" to the post.

Wisan has managed the trust since 2005, when the Utah courts took control of its assets amid allegations that church president Warren Jeffs — then a fugitive from Arizona on criminal charges — had used trust assets for personal benefit. There were also concerns Jeffs left the trust vulnerable to liquidation from default judgments in civil lawsuits filed in 2004.

The court removed FLDS religious leaders as trustees and rewrote the trust in 2006, stripping out its religious purpose and expanding its beneficiaries to include former church members.

In court papers filed Tuesday in 3rd District Court, attorneys for the FLDS said Wisan has gradually assumed more authority but has not improved the trust.

Court papers filed Wednesday on behalf of the Corporation of the President of the FLDS Church and heirs of deceased president Rulon T. Jeffs contend the courts violated the trust's charter by giving Wisan control.

Attorney Rod Parker, who drafted a version of the trust in 1998, has said control of the trust should have reverted to the church corporation when FLDS leaders were deemed unable to manage it in 2005.

"The situation today, under Mr. Wisan's stewardship, is in many respects decidedly worse than it was four years ago," Parker wrote. "This reformed trust 'cannot be effectively administered,' and there appears to be no realistic plan for winding up what was supposed to be temporary state administration."

Wisan did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

Valued at about $114 million, the communal trust holds the land and homes of FLDS members, mostly in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. The FLDS considers communal living a religious principle and formed the trust in 1942 to benefit all who follow the tenets of the church.

The FLDS has given Wisan only marginal cooperation. An effort to settle the management dispute and return control of the trust back to the church failed earlier this year.

Conflicts between Wisan and FLDS members tangled the trust in lawsuits and racked up debt, including nearly $3 million owed to Wisan for fees. More than a half-dozen lawsuits are currently pending, and unpaid property taxes have left some land parcels vulnerable to foreclosure.

Revered as a prophet by followers, Jeffs is in an Arizona jail awaiting trials on criminal charges related to the underage marriage of two FLDS girls. He also faces sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.

In 2007, Jeffs was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice for his role in the marriage of a 14-year-old follower to her 19-year-old cousin. He was sentenced to consecutive prison terms of five years to life.