Stevenson v. Superior Court

[906]

Opinion

STONE, P. J.

Petitioner, conservator of the person and estate of Irene Stevenson, by his petition for a writ of prohibition, seeks an order prohibiting the respondent superior court, sitting as a probate court, from adjudicating the validity of a disputed debt allegedly incurred by the conservatee prior to the conservatorship.

On September 26, 1969, Medical Center Convalescent Hospital, the real party in interest, filed in the conservatorship proceedings a petition seeking an order directing the conservator to pay a debt in the sum of $2,000.60 claimed to have been incurred by the conservatee for hospital care prior to the appointment of a conservator. Petitioner denied the alleged debt, and denied that real party in interest is a creditor of the conservatee; he also objected to any adjudication of the issue by the probate court on the ground that it lacked jurisdiction to hear a contested action to determine the validity of the alleged indebtedness. The court denied petitioner’s objection, raised by way of motion, and proceeded to try the issue. After partial hearing, the matter was continued. The petition before us was filed, and further proceedings were stayed.

The dispositive question is whether a probate court has jurisdiction to determine the validity of an indebtedness when a conservator rejects a creditor’s claim. It is the rule in probate, of course, that where a claim is rejected in whole or in part by an executor or an administrator, the validity of the claim must be adjudicated in a court of law before it is presented to the probate court for further proceedings.

(Estate of Bette,

171 Cal. 583, 587 [153 P. 949];

Estate of Wise,

34 Cal.2d 376, 381 [210 P.2d 497];

Estate of Boyd,

212 Cal.App.2d 634, 637-638 [28 Cal.Rptr. 258].) As there is little, if any, basic difference between guardianships and conservatorships in California (3 Condee, Cal. Probate Court Practice, Conservator-ship, § 2302, pp. 346-347), it would seem to follow that rejected claims in a1 conservatorship must be established by an action at law.