66 Tex. 201 | Tex. | 1886
To protect the interests of the creditors and distributees of an estate of a deceased person, the administrator is bound to the faithful discharge of Ms duties by a solemn oath, as well as by a solvent bond. R. S., arts. 1886, 1889. The appointment may be granted to none not qualified to act, and when one, not entitled by relationship to the deceased or interest in the estate, applies, good character is an express addition to the qualifications. Art. 1861. This qualification is passed upon by the court, but its final ordeal is in the test of the applicant’s ability to procure the requisite surety. He is not a fit person to administer the sacred trust, unless he can give the bond. The petition alleged that Braun lacked tMs qualification. He could not obtain, on the simple merits of his character for honesty and business efficiency, the certification of competent sureties. A contract to remove this impediment without curing the defect, and to secure Mm the office in spite of his disqualification, is a contract to evade the law, to escape a safeguard which the law has established against maladministration, and protects by forbidding the citizen from becoming interested in its avoidance or destruction. The courts will never enforce an agreement, the tendency of which is to impose upon this trust an unsuitable incumbent. Porter v. Jones, 52 Mo., 399.
Many honest and capable men may not be able to make $150,000 bonds, but such as cannot are not entitled to admiMster upon estates
One of the immediate objects of this contract was to have an unsuitable person appointed administrator of an estate. Pollack’s Principles of Contracts, 342. The services actually rendered by the plaintiffs, before Braun abandoned his scheme, were in furtherance of that part of the contract which the policy of the law forbids the courts to enforce. The demurrer to the petition was rightly sustained, and the judgment of dismissal is affirmed.
Affirmed.
[Opinion delivered May 7, 1886.]