Opinion
December, 1793.
Vandyke, Johns and Levy for plaintiff. George Read, John Read and Bayard for defendant.
Upon the trial of this cause, a copy of an inventory certified from the Register's office of one Mary Scully's effects, for whose administrator the defendants' testator was security in an administration bond, was offered in evidence. The goods had been appraised by two appraisers; the appraisement was signed by both but sworn to only by one of the appraisers. The appraisement was made the 7th of October, 1777, and not returned into the Register's office till the 4th of March, 1790. It was not signed by the administrator and was returned more than two years after his death.
The counsel for defendants objected to this inventory as informal and therefore incompetent to charge the estate of the security of the administrator. First, it should have been signed by the administrator and sworn to by both appraisers. Bull.N.P. 140, Clk.Asst. 140, s. 11. Second, it should have been returned immediately into the office and could not be returned thirteen years after it was made and two years after the death of the administrator.
The reference is to the Dublin edition of 1766.
Wiley, clerk of the Register, being called upon by the Court as to the practice of his office, said that inventories were always signed by the appraisers but never by the executors etc., and that there was no inventory in the office signed by executors etc.
The counsel for the plaintiff contended that the inventory was regular and Bull.N.P. 142, 143, Clk. Asst. 132, s. 3 were cited.
It is the duty of executors and administrators to return inventories, as it is the interest of creditors and heirs that they should be duly returned. Great inconveniences would follow if the objections to the present inventory were to prevail. Most inventories would be lost, and infants when they came of age would be without proof of their property. The practice in the Orphans' and Register's Courts has been very loose as to compelling the return of regular inventories in proper time. The objections to the inventory are grounded upon the delinquency of the administrator, and it would be wrong to suffer him or his security who is privy to prevail upon such ground.
inventory admitted.