Judge rules couple can stay in home
 Colorado City man wins battle with FLDS trust
 
By Staff and Wire Reports
The Spectrum
 
PHOENIX -- An Arizona appellate court ruled Tuesday that leaders of a polygamist sect on the Arizona-Utah border could not evict a couple after ousting the man from the sect.

The man was removed from his home when his wife, Lenore Holm, refused to allow her 15-year-old daughter to wed a 39-year-old married man. During the case presented to the Arizona Superior Court in May 2003, UEP Attorney Rod Parker dismissed the story from Lenore Holm's daughter as irrelevant to the case and said the reason for the eviction was not based on religion.

The Court of Appeals upheld the Mohave County trial judge's ruling, dismissing the eviction action filed against Milton and Lenore Holm by a trust controlled by leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

However, the Court of Appeals said the case did not resolve underlying legal issues involving the dispute over the property.

The FLDS church constitutes the largest polygamist group in North America, with the church teaching the practice of polygamy as a religious principle. Through the United Effort Plan, the FLDS church holds most of the land in Hildale and the neighboring town Colorado City.

The Holms live in a house on trust land in Colorado City and said church leader Warren Jeffs reacted to Lenore Holm's refusal to allow her daughter to marry by saying that Milton Holm's priesthood had been taken away. He no longer was a church member, and they had to leave their 5,000-square-foot home.

The Holms refused, and the trust sued to evict them. The trust claimed it had a landlord-tenant relationship with the Holms and that it had revoked permission for the Holms to use the property.

The couple denied that they were tenants and said they had a life-estate interest in the property and argued that allowing the trust to force them from the property would unjustly enrich the trust at their expense.

A construction worker, Milton Holm had built the house in his spare time and bought materials with cash to add new rooms, furnish tiles in the kitchen and renovate the basement.

As "a tenant at will," Parker said in May 2003, Milton Holm understood from the beginning that Leroy Johnson wanted him to obey the rules in order to stay on UEP land.

Holm never had the deed to the property.

The trial judge dismissed the trust's eviction action, ruling that Milton Holm had an occupancy right. The judge ordered that Holm be allowed to remain on the property for his lifetime or be paid just compensation for his investment in improvements he'd made.

The Court of Appeals upheld the trial judge's dismissal of the eviction action but said he was wrong to rule that the Holms' arguments were correct.

An eviction case is too narrow to resolve the underlying "genuine dispute," and other proceedings would be needed to untangle the underlying legal and factual issues, Judge Susan A. Ehrlich wrote for the panel.

Ross Chatwin, who was expelled from the FLDS church, also won his home from the church trust in an eviction battle in May. Chatwin said his case also faces appeal but believes the decision issued Tuesday by the appellate court only makes the grounds for his argument more concrete.

Chatwin said he isn't totally confident that Tuesday's decision will ensure him of a victory. But he isn't nervous about the appeal process.

Neither Parker or Milton and Lenore Holm could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Spectrum reporter Rachel Olsen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
TheSpectrum.com
Originally published December 1, 2004
 
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