Guardianship of Ceas

VAN DYKE, J.

This is an appeal from an order settling the account of the guardian of a minor. George T. Ceas was appointed guardian of the person and estate of his daughter, Adelia, on the 2d of April, 1883. After qualifying as guardian, on the twenty-first day of April, 1883, he filed an inventory and appraisement of the ward’s estate, in which it is said the estate consists of a claim against the United States for the sum of $1,410. He filed no other account until September 14, 1900, after service of a citation compelling him to do so, and long after his daughter, the ward, had reached her majority. In this account he acknowledges the receipt, on May 2, 1883, within a month after his appointment as guardian, of the sum of $1,400.07. The money so received was the proceeds of a pension claim due the mother of the ward, who had died December 28, 1879, and to which Adelia succeeded. Against this sum he charges the ward with various items, aggregating $1,800, leaving the ward indebted to the guardian in the sum of $390.50, according to his account. The court, in settling his account, disallowed, among other items, the one for $1,280, as claimed to have been paid to Charles H. Martin for the care of the ward. The contest on the appeal is directed to the dis-allowance of that .item, and it is claimed on the part of the

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appellant that he had a right to use the funds of the ward to defray her expenses of maintenance and support, inasmuch as he was financially unable to do so. It appears from the evidence in the case that after the death of his wife, and some time in 1880, the appellant placed his daughter in the charge of the family of Mr. Charles H. Martin. He was then residing on a farm near Sacramento City, as was Mr. Martin. Mr. Martin testifies that he had the care and custody of Adelia during her minority. He says: “We took her when she was eighteen months old. She became of age in 1897 or 1898. George T. Ceas paid me for the care and .expense of keeping Adelia. He commenced paying me within a month or so after we took her. It is still continuing. He has not paid it all yet, but has promised to pay.” He says they had a verbal agreement that Ceas was to pay eight dollars a month for her board and care, and that this agreement was made when he first took the child. He says they had one child, — a boy,— and that they treated this ward the same as his own child; she helped to do the household work, as children usually do; after about four or five years, they moved to Red Bluff, and lived there a number of years, and that he met Mr. Ceas occasionally— not often—thereafter, before the latter moved to Washington, which, it seems, was in 1886 or 1887. He says, perhaps for a year or two after they took the child, Ceas was able to pay his debts, but for the balance of the time, until he left California, he never was a solvent man or able to meet his indebtedness, and that he had to borrow money to get out of the state; he never saw the money that Ceas received from the government; before he left the state, Ceas came up to Red Bluff to see Adelia, and that he asked him to pay, and he said he could not; “he owed me money at that time”; that after-wards he received some fifteen notes of fifty dollars each from Ceas, and that nine of them still remain unpaid. There is no pretense that whatever Ceas paid was paid as guardian, or that the notes were executed as guardian. The testimony of Ceas was taken by deposition in Washington, and it is entirely unsatisfactory. He produces no vouchers or receipts; and can make no explanation of how he disposed of the money or what he did with it. He only says that he did not deposit it in any bank or put it out at interest; don’t pretend to know when he paid Mr. Martin, or whether what he did pay was before or after he received the money from the government be