Message-ID: <471EA97816DF454EA80466FFAA624AA5@JensenPC> From: "Don Jensen" <dnjkenosha@wi.rr.com> Subject: Re: Temporary Custody Receipt & Deed of Gift forms issue Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:29:21 -0600
I would answer the question from a practical point of view. I do not
pretend to be a lawyer. I am a pragmatist and the following reflects
that.
First, your new policy is a good one. As to the 100 or so items in
question, I would not waste huge amounts of volunteers’ time
trying to track down original donors or their families.
After hours and hours of effort, you still will have plenty of cases
where nobody connected to the item can be located. Time wasted to
little practical result.
Second, if you have possession of an artifact it is because someone,
sometime wanted you to have it, keep it, preserve it for posterity
– or maybe just wanted
it out of their basement or attic. That there is no formal Deed of Gift
is a mere oversight. I see no ethical implications.
Legally, indeed, there may be a cloud on the title. But so what?
Likely you aren’t intending to sell or transfer title of these
items to a third party.
(If you are, I might try to get signed Deeds of Gift for those few, if
any) For the majority of the items, they probably will remain in your
collection.
Thirdly, have your board pass a resolution declaring all items in your
collection (other than those, if any, on loan, their status defined by a
written loan agreement on file )
are owned by the xxx Historical Society. And having done so, proceed
on that assumed fact.
Any future issue arises ONLY if someone wants an artifact back. My
experience on our BoD has been that in more than 20 years, I remember
only two people – both children of the original donor --
who ever tried to reclaim items whose ownership we could not prove.
You may never have a practical problem (see paragraph 2, above). If
any do arise, resolve them. If you can’t persuade the claimant
to let you keep the item on grounds that the greater good is in letting
them teach history to the generations, then give the item back. No
fuss, no muss, no ill feelings..
In short, simply, focus on actual problems IF AND WHEN they occur. They
will be very few, if any, and easily resolvable if they should happen
Don’t focus – and waste countless man hours -- on what
MIGHT conceivably happen but in practice almost never does.
don jensen
From: Jack Berndt
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 3:34 PM
To: localhistory@listserve.uwec.edu
Subject: Temporary Custody Receipt & Deed of Gift forms issue
In the past year 2010, a new staff of volunteers has discovered upwards
of a hundred-plus (no exact number...) old Temporary Custody Receipt
(TCR) forms scattered about our museum. These are copied word for word
from the Past Perfect software program and typically include the donor's
name. As I'm sure many of you know, the TCR forms represent the initial
phase in acquiring an artifact, and when correct procedure is followed,
the next step is to complete and sign the Deed of Gift, to ensure legal
ownership of a donation. Therein lies our problem - for whatever reason
in the past - a subsequent Deed of Gift was not completed much of the
time. In addition, the TCRs are often partially filled out, some are
signed by the donor, many are not. Choice boxes were left unchecked.
These forms go back through the past decade, into the late 1990s. And as
you might expect, a few of the donors are no longer living.
From an ethical and/or legal standpoint, are we as the current museum
caretakers obligated to go through each and every one of these aged and
inherited TCR forms in an attempt to secure a signed Deed of Gift from
the donor; or when warranted, relatives of the donor? We have been doing
this, but it is a daunting and overwhelming task in terms of time and
research. Our historical society has a very small number of staff (all
unpaid volunteers) and given the usual attrition with this kind of help,
it will predictably take years and years to work on this problem. And
the final count is not in... we are continually finding more TCRs as we
look through and catalog our collection!
Our museum has recently changed the collections policy so that from now
on, "going forward" - a Deed of Gift is immediately signed by a donor
giving us legal ownership of an item(s) at the time of the initial
exchange. Based on these findings as described, the Board of Directors
is also asking this important question: do we legally own the articles
in our museum when there is no documented signed Deed of Gift, only a
signedTemporary Custody Receipt associated with that item?
We're considering legal consultation at some point, but are curious if
this scenario is unique or have other museums encountered a similar
situation. Any comments or suggestions would be welcomed.
Thank you,
Jack Berndt, Sauk Prairie Area Historical Society Board of Directors & Acting Museum Manager