By 1914 cy-près had been repudiated by Alabama, Iowa, Indiana, Maryland, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia; it had not yet been decided in a number of other states.

Cy-près is now accepted and the subject of 100s of law review essays thanks to its application to class action jurisprudence.

  If it becomes unlawful, impossible or impracticable to carry out the purpose of the designated charitable trust or becomes wasteful to apply all the property to the designated purpose, the trust will not fail but instead the court will direct the application of the property (or a portion of the property) to a charitable purpose that reasonably approximates the designated purpose. The cy-près doctrine means "as near as possible" - practically, this means that the court rewrites the charitable gift or trust so that it is no longer impossible or impracticable to carry out.

The European civil law tradition departed from the Common Law tradtion and never accepted the concept of cy-près