Publication Release by Dr Louise Floyd

We congratulate Associate Professor Louise Floyd who has just returned from a Fellowship to Cornell University in New York State (it is an Ivy League university) and who has published a C1 article in the A ranked journal, The Insolvency Law Journal.  The editorial of the volume described the article as “well worth the read”.

Dr  Floyd’s piece is called “Spirits in a Material World:  Receivership and the Presbyterian Church”.  It critically analyses complex case law developments on the very technical area of receivership of non-corporate entities – such as churches, non-profits – and analyses the rare civil court procedure event of court appointed receivers.  Essentially, Dr  Floyd distils the complexity of charitable donations (especially in wills) – many donors do not understand the actual legal nature of the entity to which they are donating and the need for very precise drafting to ensure that eg money bequeathed in a will or the subject of a trust is used for the purpose the (possibly now deceased) benefactor intended.

Dr  Floyd also argues for the extensive training of those in church and charitable/social club roles as to their legal and financial obligations (governance issues).  Dr  Floyd’s article analyses legal cases ranging from the 2021-2022 Supreme Court of Queensland decisions on the Presbyterian Church receivership (one of the only court appointed receiverships of a church in history) through to earlier NSW Supreme Court decisions on the Anglican church and High Court decisions on the Macedonian Orthodox church.

In addition to making an academic contribution through the work, the research had personal significance to Dr  Floyd.  Long before the problems facing today’s churches, Dr  Floyd’s late grand father, Rev John Roberts, arrived in Townsville from Northern England in the early 1900s and married Agnes Taylor of Alexandra Street North Ward – the couple moved to Brisbane where Rev Roberts served as Presbyterian Minister for the Brisbane suburbs of Ascot and Hamilton and where he was also Naval Chaplain for the Port of Brisbane in World War II.  Dr  Floyd’s late great uncle Rev Bern Frederick has a marble and gold memorial in Albert St Uniting Church Brisbane in which he is described as “True prophet of God, wise counsellor, loyal friend”.  Clearly, performing work that lead to social good was foremost in the minds of Dr  Floyd’s forebears.  And she indeed has a clear link to Townsville.