Estate of High

Citations

• 136 Pa. 222
• 20 A. 422
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1025

Syllabus

<p>1. When an executor’s account has been confirmed and the money paid out under a decree of distribution, it is too iate to have the account reviewed for the purpose of following the money in the hands of the distributees; and the decision in Keim’s App., 125 Pa. 480, might well have been rested on this ground alone.</p> <p>(a) One to whom real estate had been devised for life with remainder to his children, but who never had any children, sold the land, as trustee, in pursuance of a decree under the act of April 18,1853, P. L. 503. After his death, his executrix settled an account, charging herself with the principal arising from said sale as due to the estate of the devisor:</p> <p>2. Such account having been confirmed, and said fund awarded by the Orphans’ Court to the administrator de bonis non, etc., of the devisor, the executrix had no standing, at the audit of the administrator’s account, to claim the fund back on the ground that the sale under tile act of 1853 enlarged the life-tenant’s estate to a fee.</p> <p>3. As a general rule, no one can claim upon a distribution in the Orphans’ Court except through the decedent, as creditor, heir or legatee; and the exceptions to this rule, established by such cases as Marshall v. Hoff, 1 W. 440, and Miller’s App., 84 Pa. 391, cannot apply when the fund has been judicially ascertained to belong to the decedent’s estate.</p> <p>4. Under a devise to one for life, with remainder to his children “or their heirs,” the devisee having died without ever having had children, the remainder never vested in any one; and hence the reversion, subject to the life-estate, remained in the estate of the testator and passed under a residuary clause.</p>