Estate of Bell

Thomas Bell died testate in the city and county of San Francisco. Subsequent to the issuance of letters testamentary, and prior to the return of the inventory and appraisement, the court made an order for a family allowance of two thousand dollars per month, this allowance to continue until the further order of the court. The administration of the estate proceeded on its course, and nearly three years later two creditors filed a petition asking that the order for a family allowance previously made be modified. Theresa Bell, the widow of Thomas Bell, deceased, contested the application, and upon the hearing the original order was modified to the extent that the allowance was fixed at fifteen hundred dollars per month, commencing at that date. The administration still continuing, about three years later the order of family allowance, at the instance of the same creditors, after a hearing and contest upon the part of the widow, was again modified, being fixed upon that hearing at the amount of one hundred dollars per month. Under these various orders of family allowance more than eighty thousand dollars have been paid by the executors to the widow, and much the greater portion of this amount has been allowed *Page 3 and settled in the accounts rendered by the executors to the court. But upon the hearing of the last account rendered by the sole executor, Staacke, creditors appeared and objected to those items of the account consisting of various sums of money paid by the executor to the widow under the two later orders of family allowance. And these creditors based their objections upon the ground that the two aforesaid orders were void by reason of the fact that the estate was insolvent when they were made. At the hearing of the account they offered evidence tending to show the insolvency of the estate at that time, and this evidence was rejected. The sums paid to the widow to which objections were made were allowed by the court, and this appeal is taken by the creditors from the order settling the account.

This court will not concern itself as to whether or not the original order for a family allowance became void ipso facto either upon the return of the inventory, or expired by mere lapse of time upon the expiration of one year from its date by reason of insolvency coming upon the estate. The moneys here involved are moneys expended under the subsequent orders, and our attention will be directed to those orders alone. For, if the original order was void at the time the later orders were made, and therefore not susceptible of modification, then the second order made was a new and independent order, and must look to itself for sufficient strength to stand alone.

Had the court power to make the second order? Or, bringing the question directly home, upon the hearing of an account of the executor may the creditors object to the allowance of moneys paid out under this order? We are entirely satisfied the creditors cannot successfully support the contention made. The order is not void upon its face, and it is too late upon the hearing of the account to show that the estate was insolvent when the order was made, and that therefore the court lacked jurisdiction to make it. Such a holding would place executors and administrators in a sorry plight as would be fully exemplified in this case, if these items for money paid were rejected from the account. Conceding the court had no power to make the order if the estate was insolvent, still the making of the order in itself is an adjudication that the estate was not insolvent. In principle, this identical *Page 4 question is decided by the case of In re Welch, 106 Cal. 430, where the court, in speaking of an order of family allowance, said: "It is asserted that this order is invalid for lack of a finding that the property exempt from execution and already set apart to the support of the widow was insufficient for the purpose. . . . . The fact that the court, after setting aside exempt property, made its order for family allowance, involved of necessity the decision that the amount originally set apart was insufficient. The order for additional allowance in itself was a declaration of that insufficiency."