72 So. 196 | Miss. | 1916
delivered the opinion of the court.
Mike Branchieri, administrator of the estate of Peter Branchieri, filed this suit in the circuit court of Warren county against the City Savings & Trust Company, and obtained a judgment for one thousand and eighty-two dollars, and forty-two cents, from which judgment the City Savings & Trust Company, defendant below, appeals here.
On March 23, 1911, the Lexington Banking. & Trust Company, of Lexington, Ky., was appointed administrator of the estate of the said Peter Branchieri at Lexington, Ky., and qualified as such under the laws of the state of Kentucky. After the appellee, Mike Branchieri, was appointed and qualified as administrator by the Warren county chancery court on April 27, 1911, he went to the appellant hank and presented his letters of administration and demanded that the hank pay over to him the amount of his father’s deposit, so that he could properly' administer same and pay the debts due by his father to
It further appears' from the record that there were certain rules and regulations of the appellant bank contained and printed in the deposit passbook that was issued to the decedent, Peter Branchieri, which attempted to prescribe certain conditions and stipulations between the bank and the depositor, all of which were void if in conflict with the statutory law of the state. The appellee, Mike Branchieri (local) domestic administrator of the estate of Peter Branchieri, deceased, on June 21, 1911, filed this suit in the circuit court of Warren county to recover this deposit and interest from the appellant bank; and from a judgment in his favor, the bank prosecutes this appeal.
There seems to be but one question necessary for us to decide in this controversy, and that is whether or not / the Lexington Banking & Trust Company, the foreign administrator of the estate of Peter Branchieri, deceased, could legally receive from, and validly receipt, the appellant City Savings & Trust Company, at Vicksburg, Miss.,
“Executors and administrators who have qualified in other states or countries, may sue in the courts of this state, or may receive without suit and give a valid acquittance for any property of, or1 debts due to, their testators or intestates, after filing in the office of the clerk of the chancery court of the county where there may be some person indebted to the decedent or having some of his effects in possession, a certified .copy of the record of the appointment and qualification of the executor or administrator according to the law of the state or country where he qualified, and a certificate of the officer before whom he is liable to account as such that he is there liable to .account for the thing sued for or received.”
The Lexington Banking & Trust Company, foreign administrator under the laws of Kentucky, failed to comply with the above statutory requirement, and therefore had no legal authority to collect from the appellant bank at Vicksburg the amount of money left there on deposit, which was due to the estate of the deceased Peter Branchieri; -and the payment by the appellant bank to the foreign administrator was without authority of law. The fact that the foreign administrator recorded in the office of the chancery clerk of Warren county a certified copy of the record of his appointment two years after he had collected the money from the appellant bank was not such a compliance with section 2099 of the Mississippi Code of 1906 as would validate his past unauthorized acts, and thereby affect the intervening rights of the domestic administrator and the local resident creditors of the deceased, who had, in the meantime, probated their claims in Warren county, Miss. Jackson v. Scanland, 65 Miss. 487, 4 So. 552. The statute is plain, and means that a foreign administrator has no standing or authority to sue in the courts of this state or receive any money or prop
The contention by counsel for the appellant that the rule announced in Klein v. French, 57 Miss. 662, should control and reverse this case in its favor is untenable. The law announced there was good law at that time, 1880, according to the statute then in force in the Codes of 1857 and 1871, but the statue was changed, and section 1189 of the Code of 1871 is brought forward in section 2091 of the Code of 1880i, section 1925 of the Code of 1892, and section 2099 of the Code of 1906. Consequently we find-that, when the case of Klein v. French, supra, was decided, Justice George had before him the statute of 1871, in which the following language does not.appear, ‘ ‘ or may receive without suit and give a valid acquittance for any property of, or debts due to, their testators or intestates,” but this language was added in the statute of 1880 by the legislature, and it appears in the statute in Codes of 1880, 1892 and is in section 2099 of the Code of 1906. So it becomes obvious that the statute is now different from what it was in 1871. Furthermore, the Klein v. French decision is favorable to the appellee’s contention here, in that it holds inferentially that, where there are debts due .by the deceased in the jurisdiction where the foreign debtor resides, the principal administrator (the foreign administrator in this case) has no authority to receive any voluntary payment from the
The judgment of the lower court is affirmed.
Affirmed.