Richardson v. Billingslea

Miller, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In our opinion the defence of lapse of time and laches. taken by the executor in this case, must be sustained upon the authority of Yearley, Ex’r vs. Cockey, Adm’r, 68 Md., 174 . The testator, Richard Green, died in 1861, leaving a will by which he gave all his property to six legatees in equal shares. The appellee was one of two executors named in the will, and became sole executor, the other having relinquished the trust.

The estate was largely in debt, and about portions of it there was serious and protracted litigation, involving in one instance an appeal to this Court. He passed four accounts in the Orphans’ Court, the first in March, 1863, the second in July, 1863, the third in May, 1875, and the fourth in May, 1879, and these the appellants seek to have opened and restated. Their petition for this purpose was not filed until August, 1887. It is filed by the administrators of John Richardson and William J. Richardson, two deceased legatees who died intestate.

It was admitted at bar that these, intestates were of full age when the accounts were passed, or at least at the date of the passage of the third account. They lived after that, the one until 1882, and the other until 1887, and neither of them during his life ever made any complaint, or took any steps to have these accounts corrected, nor, so far as appears, did any of the other legatees. ⁴⁰⁹ The third account is the one of most importance because it shows upon its face that the balance in the hands of the executor amounting to $42,999.73 had been distributed and that releases bj the distributees had been executed. The fourth, and, as it is termed, the final account, simply deals with the sum of $1,550 which had come to the hands of the executor since the passage of the third account, and disposes of this balance after allowance of commissions and costs, in part payment of the claims of the executor’s counsel for professional services. The petition alleges that these accounts were inadvertently passed hy the Orphans’ Court, and that their passage was procured hy the executor without any notice to the parties interested in the estate, with intent to defraud the legatees under the will.

These averments, as well as all others imputing