Attorney Jeffrey Swinton sets out to diagram all the people involved in a lawsuit against the polygamist-run trust he says is trying to steal his clients' property.
But after four years with the case, even Swinton can't keep everyone straight: The names - brothers, half-brothers, sister-wives and cousins - begin to run together."I'm not sure what this guy does," he says, puzzling over a name he had just written. "Suffice it to say that I've pretty much sued them all."
Swinton represents about 30 dissidents from two polygamist communities astride the Utah-Arizona line that are dominated by a fundamentalist Mormon sect.
The dissidents have sued church leaders they once considered pro-phets.
"It seems I bought into a belief system that's invalid," said 55-year-old Don Cox, who moved to the Washington County community of Hildale 35 years ago to practice fundamental Mormonism under then-patriarch LeRoy John-son.
Cox, who has two wives and 19 children, has abandoned the sect. "I've decided the whole thing is a phony," he said.
The 4-year-old case has generated boxfuls of briefs but still no trial date.
The communities of Hildale and nearby Colorado City, Ariz., were founded in the 1920s by a group espousing polygamy. A trust owns most of the property in both communities. Followers pledged their land, homes and a percentage of their incomes to the trust.
The dissidents say they were promised the property eventually would become theirs in exchange for development or contributions to the community.
The plaintiffs, many of whom still live in the twin communities of about 4,000 and continue to practice plural marriage, are seeking to dissolve the trust. They contend the leaders misappropriated funds and commingled religious and municipal money.
While The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned polygamy in 1890, thousands of fundamentalists continue the practice, mostly in remote enclaves in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Mexico. They believe it remains a commandment essential for a person's eternal welfare. Polygamists once were hunted down, but Utah authorities now ignore plural marriages.
At issue in the lawsuit is the United Effort Plan, established in 1942 to hold property in the communities in trust.
Religious and community leaders, mostly one and the same, controlled who was allowed to join the trust and settle and build in the two towns.
"The invitation to build on property has always been conditioned on good standing in the church," said the defendants' attorney, Raymond Scott Berry.