In Re Estate of McGue
Before: Shaw
Synopsis
APPEAL from am order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County settling an account of an administratrix of the estate of a deceased person. James C. Rives, Judge. Reversed.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
SHAW, J.
The appeal herein is taken from an order of the superior court settling an account current rendered by Elizabeth E. McGue as administratrix of the estate of John P. McGue, deceased.
In the account the administratrix charged against herself the sum of $138,068.41, as the amount of inventory and appraisement. This inventory and appraisement included a one-half interest in a certain note executed by one Boggs on December 16, 1913, payable to the decedent John P. McGue and the said Elizabeth E. McGue, who was then his wife, for the sum of eight thousand five hundred dollars. In the inventory the estate was given credit for only a one-half interest in this note, and it was appraised therein at $4,250. Consequently the account covered but a one-half interest in the note. Abram L. McGue,' a brother of the decedent, and Delbert McGue, the son of a deceased brother, the appellants herein, filed exceptions to the account, alleging that the decedent at the time of his death owned the entire interest in the Boggs note and that the account was incorrect and false in so far as it failed to charge against the administratrix and credit to the estate the whole amount of said note. The appellants are heirs of ,the decedent, but not the only heirs.
The respondent in answer to the exceptions alleged that at the time of the execution of the Boggs note in 1913, McGue made a gift to her of a one-half interest in the note and in the mortgage given to secure the same, and that she thereby became the owner of said one-half as her own property. She further alleged that thereafter, on September 22, 1915, some four months before McGue’s death, he was duly adjudged to be an incompetent person and that she was appointed his guardian; that as such guardian she filed an inventory and appraisement of his estate, in which the entire interest in said note was by mistake listed as belonging to the ward and was valued at eight thousand five hundred dollars; that her said husband died on January 21, 1916; that thereafter in preparing a final account as such guardian she failed to observe said error in the inventory, and that by charging her
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self with, the amount of said inventory she charged herself as guardian with the entire interest in said note as property belonging to her said husband. She also alleged that she did not discover said mistake, and was not aware that this said account and inventory included the entire interest in said note as the property of the ward until shortly afterward, when she came to make out her inventory as the administratrix of the estate of said decedent.
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