In re Bayley

• Decision Date: 14 November 1904
• Parties: In re BAYLEY.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

59 A. 215

67 N.J.E. 566

In re BAYLEY.

Prerogative Court of New Jersey.

Nov. 14, 1904.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Appeal from Orphans' Court, Essex County.

In the matter of the accounting of William Bayley, administrator of Mary E. Bayley, deceased. From the decree, administrator appeals. Affirmed.

Howe & Davis, for appellant.

Jerome D. Gedney and Frank H. Sommer, for respondents.

MAGIE, Ordinary. Mary E. Bayley died in Essex county, November 24, 1894, leaving, her surviving, her husband, Joseph Bayley, and three children, viz., William, Sarah, and Joseph, Jr. William Bayley was appointed administrator of his mother's estate, and on April 14, 1902, he filed an inventory of the personal property of the deceased, and presented an account for allowance. The surviving husband of deceased filed exceptions both to the inventory and account. In January, 1903, the administrator presented an amended account, to which the same party filed exceptions. The exceptions, after a number of continuances, were brought to hearing before the orphans' court, and testimony was taken thereon in open court, and on January 9, 1904, the court made a decree allowing some of the exceptions, and restating the account so as to charge the administrator with the balance of $6,594.66, and directing that the same should be distributed and paid over to the surviving husband of the intestate. The administrator has appealed from the decree and all its parts, but the argument here has been directed only to one of the questions raised by the exceptions.

That question relates to the 21 shares of stock of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, of the par value of $50 each, which the administrator inventoried as part of the estate of deceased, and as of the value of $1,050. There was an exception to the inventory in respect to the valuation given to those shares, and in passing it may be said that the evidence makes it clear that they were worth very much more than par. In the account first presented accountant charged himself with the par value of those shares, and prayed allowance, as the case shows, for 14 shares thereof as of the value at par, and as transferred 7 shares to his sister Sarah and 7 shares to himself. In the amended account the administrator charged himself with the inventory, but prayed allowance for the 21 shares of stock at its par value, as "erroneously stated in inventory as the property of said Mary E. Bayley." The exceptions challenged this allowance, and presented the question whether the ownership of the shares was in Mary E. Bayley at the time of her death, so as to require her administrator to account for the same. That is the question argued.

Since the administrator had inventoried these shares of stock as part of the estate of deceased, the court below correctly held that the burden of establishing the fact that they did not belong to her at her decease was cast upon him, and that he was not entitled to the allowance prayed by his amended account, except upon satisfactory proof of that fact. The court below, upon the evidence, reached the conclusion that the administrator had not established the fact that the shares of stock in question were not the property of the deceased at the time of her death. The administrator claimed that they had been the subject of a gift by deceased in her lifetime to her three children in equal portions. But the court correctly held that the evidence did not make out either a donatio mortis causa or a gift inter vivos, but rather disclosed an intent on the part of deceased to make disposition thereof at her death, which failed to become effective because not made in writing and with the formalities required. The opinion rendered in that court reviews the evidence with care, and reaches the conclusion indicated on grounds which I deem entirely support it. The result thus reached settles (1) that the administrator was bound to include in his...