Endowment: Reliability of a 500-Year-Old Endowment Deed as Legal Proof

Practical Laws of Islam as per the teachings of Imam Khamenei

Endowment: Reliability of a 500-Year-Old Endowment Deed as Legal Proof

English:

Question #2041:

Can a five-century-old endowment deed be relied on as a proof of the property held in trust?

Answer #2041:

The endowment deed alone cannot be relied on as a legal proof of the endowment of the property unless one is certain that its contents are correct. However, if among the old people the property is famous as an endowment or the person in control of the property admits its endowment so that it may make one know it for sure or to become certain about it, or there is an established practice, i.e., they went about running the property as an endowment, the property is ruled to be an endowment. At any rate, passage of time should not render the endowed property to cease to be so.

-Imam Khamenei, Practical Laws of Islam, Importance and Conditions of Endowments