Stanley v. Safe Deposit & Trust Co.

McSherry, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from the Orphans’ Court of Baltimore County, and it brings up for review the propriety of an order refusing to transmit to the Circuit Court for trial a proposed issue of fact. Joseph Cox wrote with his own hand and then, on the thirteenth day of November, eighteen hundred and ninety-six, executed in due form, his last will and testament. On the fourteenth day of December following he died.

The Safe Deposit and Trust Company of Baltimore was named in the will as the executor. On the twenty-second of December the executor propounded the paper for probate in the Orphans’ Court of Baltimore County—the testator in the will itself having declared that he was, at the time of its execution, a resident of that county, though he died in the city. The will was admitted to probate and letters testamentary were granted. Notice to creditors was at once given ; inventories were filed, and after the lapse of six months, the period fixed by the statute, a first and final administration account was stated on July the seventh, eighteen hundred and ninety-seven.

In that account the executor was charged with the entire personal estate, and was allowed credit for the expenses and debts and pecuniary legacies, altogether aggregating thirty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-five dollars and ⁴⁵² eighty-three cents, which were paid ; and the residue of ninety-four thousand nine hundred dollars and ninety-four cents, less the collateral inheritance tax, was turned over to the Safe Deposit and Trust Company to be held by it in trust under the provisions of the will. On August the third, or nearly a month after the estate had been fully and finally settled according to the provisions of the will and the requirements of the statute, the appellants, claiming to be next of kin of the testator, filed in the Orphans’ Court of Baltimore County a petition in which, after alluding to the probate of the will, they alleged that at. the time the will was executed Cox was not of sound and disposing mind; that the instrument had been procured by undue influence and by fraud; that Cox had not, in fact, been a resident of Baltimore County, and that the probate of the will in Baltimore County was improper. The petition then prayed that issues might be framed to present these allegations for trial in a Court of Law. The executor answered neither admitting nor denying that the petitioners were next of kin of the testator, but flatly contradicting the averments as to mental incapacity, undue influence, fraud and non-residence.

On October the twenty-sixth the appellants filed a second petition asking that preliminary issues involving the inquiries as to whether Cox, at the time of his death, resided in Baltimore City or Baltimore County, and as to whether the appellants were his next of kin, might be transmitted to a Court of Law for trial. On November the sixteenth the executor filed a supplemental answer admitting that the appellants were the decedent’s next of kin ; and on the same day an additional answer was put in, resisting on various grounds the granting of the proposed issue as to non-residence. In November the Orphans’ Court dismissed the petition of October the twenty-sixth, which prayed for the transmission of the preliminary issues just above indicated. From that order the pending appeal was taken.

The single question thus presented is, whether, under the ⁴⁵³ circumstances stated,the orderwhich refused to grantan issue respecting the residence of Mr. Cox at the time of his decease, was correct. And this is the sole question, because the petition of October the twenty-sixth, which was the only one dismissed by the order appealed from, propounded no other issues than the two of non-residence and relationship, and the executor’s admission that the appellants are the testator’s next of kin has eliminated the latter from the controversy. It is undoubtedly true that the Orphans’ Courts are tribunals of special, limited jurisdiction. They have no powers other than those conferred by statute and such in addition as are incident to and necessary for the performance of the ones expressly given.

But there’ can be no question that to them is committed exclusively the authority to admit wills to probate and to grant letters testamentary, and in cases of intestacy, letters of administration. This authority is, whilst exclusive, itself also limited. There are circumstances which restrict its exercise to prescribed localities. If the circumstances which give rise to the jurisdiction do not exist-in a particular case the authority to act does not arise.

But who is primarily to determine whether those circumstances do exist? The Code fixes the place where a decedent’s will must be probated, by prescribing that it may be proved in the county wherein letters testamentary or of administration may be granted; and if such letters may be granted in Baltimore City, then probate may be had in the Orphans’ Court of the city. By sec. 14 of Art.. 93 of the Code it is enacted that in cases of intestacy letters of administration may be granted by the Orphans’ Court of the county wherein the deceased’s mansion house or residence was situated, or, if he had no mansion house or residence, then letters may be granted in the county where he died. It is apparent, then, if Cox had no mansion house or residence in Baltimore County, and if he died in Baltimore City, that the Orphans’ Court of Baltimore City alone had authority to admit his will to probate; ⁴⁵⁴ and it is equally manifest that if he was, at the time of his death, a resident of Baltimore County, though he died in the city, the Orphans’ Court of the county was the proper tribunal to take probate of his will.

Now, it is obvious that when the will, wherein the testator declared himself to be a resident of Baltimore County, was presented to the Orphans’ Court of that county, for probate, that Court was required to decide and determine whether it had jurisdiction to admit the will to probate, and therefore, at the threshold, had power to decide and determine whether Mr. Cox had been, in fact, at the time of his death, a resident of the county. This was an inquiry which it was necessary for the Orphans’ Court to make and to decide before it could proceed either to admit the will to probate or to grant letters of administration. The question as to where the decedent had his residence at the time of his death was essentially within the Orphans’ Court’s jurisdiction to decide when the will was propounded, unless there had then been framed for trial in the Circuit Court an issue presenting that inquiry for the finding of a jury. Necessarily and incontestibly, as the right to admit the will to probate depends, in such a case as this, upon the residence of the testator at the time of his death, the jurisdiction to decide where that residence was, is involved in, and is an inseparable part of, the power to grant the probate.

In determining whether the will should be admitted to probate at at all the Orphans’ Court was compelled itself to decide the question of the decedent’s residence, as no such issue of fact, for trial by a jury, had then been proposed ; and the Court must have decided that such residence had been in Baltimore County, because in no other way could the Court have adjudged that this will was entitled to be admitted to probate in that county. This decision may be right or it may be wrong on the facts that were in evidence before the Court; but the question is, not whether the Court rightly decided, but whether it had a right to decide what it did decide. If it had a right to decide the question of resi ⁴⁵⁵ dence, then it had the right to determine whether it had jurisdiction to admit the will to probate, and if it decided that preliminary question erroneously its decision was subject to review on appeal or to reversal by the Court itself upon proper application made to it for that purpose in due season. Raborg v. Hammond, 2 Har. & G. 48; Schultz v. Houck, &c., 29 Md. 26 .

The evidence upon which it based its decision could not be looked to by this Court (even if it were in the record) to determine whether the Orphans’ Court correctly decided the question of residence, except upon an appeal from that decision, and there is no such appeal before us. The subject being within the Court’s jurisdiction all acts done as consequences of and pursuant to its decision on a matter of fact that gave it the right to exercise that jurisdiction, are valid until reversed on appeal or set aside by its own order, even though it should subsequently appear that the conclusion reached on that matter of fact was not actually warranted. Wilson, Admr., v. Ireland, 4 Md.