Yonley v. Lavender

• Decision Date: 01 October 1874
• Citation: 22 L.Ed. 536,88 U.S. 276,21 Wall. 276
• Parties: YONLEY v. LAVENDER
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

88 U.S. 276

22 L.Ed. 536

21 Wall. 276

YONLEY v. LAVENDER.

October Term, 1874

ERROR to the Supreme Court of Arkansas; the case being thus:

By the constitution and laws of Arkansas the probate of wills and the grant of letters testamentary and of administration, are matters wholly within the jurisdiction of the Probate Court. One statute thus enacts:

'All actions commenced against any executor or administrator after the death of the testator or intestate, shall be considered demands legally exhibited against such estate from the time of serving the original process on the executor or administrator, and shall be classed accordingly.¹

'All demands against any estate shall be paid by the executor or administrator in the order in which they are classed; and no demand of one class shall be paid until the claims of all previous classes are satisfied; and if there be not sufficient to pay the whole of any one class, such demands shall be paid in proportion to their amounts, which apportionment shall be made by the Court of Probate.'

Under this statute, the courts of Arkansas have decided,² that the legal effect of granting letters testamentary or of administration is to place the whole estate, real and personal, within the custody of the law, and leave it there until the administration has been completed; that in this way the assets are preserved, so that there may be a fair and equal division of them among the several creditors, according to a scale of priority fixed by law, there being no distinction between resident and non-resident creditors; that all demands against deceased persons, which are not liens upon specific property before the death of the debtor, can only be collected by being brought under the administration of the Probate Court, and that while it is true that the debtor is not compelled to resort to the Probate Court to settle the existence of his debt, but may, by suit in any court of competent jurisdiction, obtain judgment on it, the effect of this judgment is to establish the demand against the estate, and to remit it to the Probate Court for classification by the administrator and payment under the order of the court, either in whole or in part, according to the rule under which the rights of creditors are marshalled; that it cannot be enforced in the ordinary mode, by execution, as if rendered against a living person. 'If it could be'—say the courts of Arkansas—'the statutory provision relating to all estates, whether solvent or insolvent, 'that all demands against estates shall be paid by the executor or administrator in the order in which they are classed,' and 'that no demand of any class shall be paid until the claims of all previous classes are satisfied,' would be rendered of no effect, and the whole policy of the law on the subject defeated.'

Such being the law of the State in respect to judgments obtained against the estates of deceased persons in the courts of the State, the inquiry in the present case was whether a different rule was to be applied to judgments of the Federal courts. This present case was thus:

One Du Bose, having lands in the county of Arkansas, in the State of that name, died in October, 1869, and a certain Halleburton was appointed the administrator of his estate. Halleburton did nothing in the way of discharging his duty. He took no account of debts and assets, did not convert the property into money, and at the end of three years, the term which a statute in Arkansas, governing the subject prescribes as that when the administrator ought to have his estate settled, things remained as he had found them. Hereupon, a certain Lavender was appointed administrator de bonis non in his place.

In this state of things, Auguste Gautier, a citizen of Louisiana, brought suit in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Arkansas against Lavender as administrator, obtained judgment against him, and, at a sale under an execution issued on this judgment, one Yonley, who seems to have been the attorney of record, bought certain lands belonging to the estate of Du Bose, situate in Arkansas County, in the State of the same name. These proceedings took place several years after the administration of Du Bose's estate had commenced, and while it was being carried on in Arkansas County under the administration laws of the State. Shortly after Yonley purchased the land he brought an action of ejectment in the proper State court to dispossess the administrator, which resulted adversely to him, and the Supreme Court of the State, on appeal, affirmed the judgment of the lower court. It was to revise this judgment that the present writ of error was brought.

Mr. W. M. Rose, for the plaintiff in error:

The jurisdiction of the Federal court to render the judgment cannot be denied, and that jurisdiction being granted, its process, issued for the purpose of enforcing the judgment, was valid.

A leading case is Boyle v. Zacharie.³ Story, J., there said:

'Writs and executions issuing from the courts of the United States, in virtue of these provisions, are not controlled or controllable in their general operation and effect by any collateral regulations and restrictions which the State laws have imposed upon State courts to govern them in the actual use, suspension, or superseding of them. Such regulations and restrictions are exclusively addressed to the State tribunals, and have no efficacy in the courts of the United States, unless adopted by them.'- And this doctrine is declared in numerous cases⁴ since.

Payne v. Hook,⁵ seems conclusive in the matter.

Mr. A. H. Garland, contra.

Mr. Justice DAVIS delivered the opinion of the court.

The several States of the Union necessarily have full control over the estate of deceased persons within their respective limits, and we see no ground on which the validity of the sale in question can be sustained. To sustain it would be in effect to nullify the administration laws of the State by giving to creditors out of the State greater privileges in the distribution of estates than creditors in the State enjoy. It is easy to see, if the non-resident creditor, by suing in the Federal courts of Arkansas, acquires a right to subject the assets of the estate to seizure and sale for the satisfaction of his debt, which he could not do by suing in the State court, that the whole estate, in case there were foreign creditors, might be swept away. Such a result would place the judgments of the Federal court on a higher grade than the judgments of the State court, necessarily produce conflict, and render the State powerless in a matter over which she has confessedly full control. Besides this it would give to the contract of a foreign creditor made in Arkansas a wider scope than a similar contract made in the same State by the same debtor with a home creditor. The home creditor would have to await the due course of administration for the payment of his debt, while the foreign creditor could, as soon as he got his judgment, seize and sell the estate of his debtor to satisfy it, and this, too, when the laws of the State in force when both contracts were made provided another mode for the compulsory payment of the debt. Such a difference is manifestly unjust and cannot be supported. There is no question here about the regulation of process by the State to the injury of the party suing in the Federal court. The question is whether the United States courts can execute judgment against the estates of deceased persons in the course of administration in the States, contrary to the declared law of the State on the subject. If they can, the rights of those interested in the estate who are citizens of the State where the administration is conducted are materially changed, and the limitation which governs them...