Fort v. Battle

Citations

• 21 Miss. 133

Syllabus

<p>An administrator to whom a debt is due by the estate, for money expended by him in the course of administration, has a right to retain it out of the funds of the estate ; but if he omit to do so, and resign his letters, he must occupy the place of a creditor of the estate.</p> <p>However illegal the course of administration of an administrator, yet the distributees may waive the objections to it, and ratify his acts; and if they agree to submit his actions to arbitrators, and approve the award of the arbitrators in favor of the administrator, the distributees cannot be heard after-wards to complain.</p> <p>A guardian ad litem cannot bind his wards by submitting the suit in their name to arbitration, and approving the avrard ; they can only conduct the suit under the directions of the court.</p> <p>A husband cannot bind his wife by submitting to an arbitration questions affecting her separate property ; he may submit to arbitration any thing that he can dispose of in right of his wife; but as respects property which he cannot alien, he cannot submit to an award which jvould give that property to another.</p> <p>An award may be binding on a portion of the parties, and not on the residue ; as where adult and minor heirs, the latter acting by their guardian ad litem, submitted with the administrator the latter’s course of administration to arbitrators, and approved of their award; the adults will be bound, and not the minors, by the award.</p> <p>It seems that where an administrator’s final account has been presented, and an order made on the records of the probate court, that “ the final account be filed and recorded,” though no formal judgment of allowance be entered, yet it -will be a sufficient judgment of ratification of the account.</p> <p>The judgment of the probate court, allowing the final account of an administrator, is void, unless the notice required by statute be first given ; and this notice the record must show affirmatively.</p> <p>Where the distribut