Picot v. Bates

• Decision Date: 31 March 1871
• Citation: 47 Mo. 390
• Parties: LOUIS G. PICOT, ADMINISTRATOR OF ANN DILLON, Respondent, v. BARTON BATES et al., Appellants.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

47 Mo. 390

LOUIS G. PICOT, ADMINISTRATOR OF ANN DILLON, Respondent,

v.BARTON BATES et al., Appellants.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1871.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court.

C. C. Whittelsey, for respondent.

A. W. Alexander, for appellants.

BLISS, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

This case has heretofore been before this court, and is reported in 39 Mo. 292. All the preliminary questions raised by defendants were there decided, and we have only now to consider the question of fraud as charged in the petition.

P. M. Dillon, deceased, was administrator of the estate of his deceased wife, and, as such, in 1845 made his final settlement, in which he charged himself with $2,768.49, as received from the estate of John T. Nash, upon a claim in favor of his said wife. The account shows sundry credits, the first of which are $2,301.20 debt and $1,116.09 interest, entered as follows: “By amount of my demand allowed by the court against the estate of John Nash, deceased, on the 16th of November, 1837.” This amount and interest contained no reference to a voucher, but the subsequent items all referred to vouchers in regular order. The record entry shows that the account came under the special cognizance of the court, that the debits amounted to $2,768.49 and the credits to $3,650.22. Ann E. Dillon, deceased, was one of the daughters of Ann T. Dillon, and entitled to one-third of her estate, which her administrator now seeks to recover from the heirs of P. M. Dillon, charging fraud in the settlement.

This settlement, so far as the orders of the court are concerned, appears to have been regular, and it must bind the estate with the force of a judgment unless it can be impeached by fraud. (Jones v. Brinker, 20 Mo. 87; State v. Rowland, 23 Mo. 98.) The plaintiff claims that he has established his charge from the face of the account in connection with evidence; that the record fails to show any such allowance of a demand of $2,301.20 against the estate of John T. Nash.

Judging merely from the evidence now before us, and assuming that there was no more at the time of the approval of the account, it is clear that the credit should not have been allowed. The record shows no allowance of any claim against the Nash estate except the one with which the administrator is charged, and if it were allowed it does not appear how he could be credited with it. The account looks very much as though the administrator had charged himself with a matter and then credited himself with the same thing as a set-off; and if it had not been once judicially passed upon and approved, we might so find. Or, if all the evidence submitted to the Probate Court were now before us, and the matter was not explained, we might say that the court was imposed upon by a fictitious credit. We are wholly in the dark as to how this credit came to be allowed by the court, and yet it is impossible to say that evidence could not have been submitted that would authorize...