In re Probate Appeal of Barbera

Syllabus

The plaintiff appealed from the Superior Court's judgment dismissing his appeal from a decree of the Probate Court denying his motion for payment of attorney's fees and petition to surcharge. He claimed that he incurred attorney's fees for the benefit of a trust and its beneficiaries in pursuing the defendant's removal as trustee of that trust and that the defendant should have been surcharged for attorney's fees that the defendant incurred for his defense against the action to remove him as trustee and paid out of the trust's assets. The plaintiff claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly concluded that he had not appealed from a decree of the Probate Court approving the final accounting of a successor trustee, which had been issued on the same day as the decree denying his motion for payment and his petition to surcharge. Held: The Superior Court properly concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdic- tion to entertain the plaintiff's motion for payment of attorney's fees that he incurred for the benefit of the trust and its beneficiaries in securing the defendant's removal as trustee because, in the absence of express statutory authorization, the court lacked jurisdiction to entertain such an equitable claim, and the statutes that the plaintiff claimed authorized his claim (§§ 45a- 98 (a) (6), 45a-110 (c), and 45a-175 (g)) were inapplicable to the facts of the case. The Superior Court's finding that the plaintiff did not appeal from the final accounting decree was not clearly erroneous in light of the evidence and pleadings in the record because there was no indication in any of the pleadings that the plaintiff filed with the court between the commencement of his probate appeal and the first day of trial that the propriety of the final accounting decree was at issue, as the plaintiff maintained that his appeal pertained solely to the propriety of the Probate Court's decision to deny his motion for payment and his petition to surcharge, and the court and t