Dear Mad Dawg,
I'd imagine that you'd have to look at the facts of each case. I'm not sure that the courts will any longer defer to the canons of a church organization. Certainly, the courts haven't deferred to the canons of the Catholic Church during diocesan bankruptcy hearings.
I imagine where a parish can show that the parish was truly built by the money and under the authority of the congregation, it may be hard for dioceses to seize them. Where the diocese can show that it initiated and maintained authority of a parish continuously, I imagine it will be difficult for congregations to keep the property.
I don't know much about Episcopal polity and organization, but I know a little more about Catholic stuff.
In the Catholic Church, you generally just can't start your own Catholic Church. By Canon Law, a Catholic parish is erected by the ordinary of the see. Any physical property accumulated is done so by the power and authority of the pastor, who is solely answerable to the ordinary of the see.
Legally, even where parishes are separately-incorporated bodies, they are initiated by the bishop, and they are governed by episcopally-controlled devices of governance.
Here, the case is usually strong that the congregation has no ownership in the parish.
However, sometimes there have been "independent" "Catholic" parishes created without the authority of the bishop, but then for whatever reason, try to affiliate with the local diocese. Should the ordinary of the diocese and the parish come to terms, the parish then becomes a Catholic parish of the diocese. But if the governing legal documents of the parish aren't changed to legally hand over legal control of the assets of the parish, I think that they'd remain in the hands of the congregation.
Just my two cents.
sitetest
Until the diocese files for bankruptcy, and then the Catholic Bishop holds forth that the property has always belonged to the local parish.
The thing is, we pretend that law is this broad and generic thing that is applicable in the abstract, but that is not true in gross or in fine.
In gross, law is a political tool for imposing the will of those controlling the lawmaking and law enforcement processes. Therefore, law is never uniformly enforced, and never will be. I suppose a nice pair of examples would be that the Communion wine of the powerful and huge Catholic Church was not stoppered in most places during Prohibition, but the peyote of the Navajo Indians is illegal, regardless of the ancientness of the practice or centrality of the drug to the rituals. Catholicism is big and powerful; you treat it different politically than you do some cult on the fringes.
In fine, the law in any particular case is decided by a man, or maybe a handful of them. The judge's name is very Hispanic. Odds are, he is either a Catholic or an Evangelical. Either way, odds are that he has no respect for the gay English Church, and, when faced with a close question of law, will choose the arguments that favor giving a bash in the chops to the organization he disfavors.
That's why judge or jury selection is where cases are decided.
Evenhanded, impartial, blind law is like Santa Claus: a beloved, friendly, warm-and-toasty-inside fairy tale.
Do you think that the mundane item of the name on the deed played a major part. If so, that will be the next change that the ECUSA will be acting on nationwide.