181 Mass. 320 | Mass. | 1902
This is an appeal from a decree of the Probate Court allowing an account filed by the appellee as executor of the will of Nicholas B. Lake for the latter. as administrator of the estate of his wife, Martha A. Lake. No account was rendered by Nicholas B. Lake during his lifetime. In the account filed by the appellee, the property is accounted for as the property of Nicholas B. Lake, transferred to him by himself as administrator of his- wife’s estate. The question is whether that is a proper accounting, or whether the property should be regarded as assets of the wife’s estate.
The case was heard by a single justice, partly on agreed facts and partly on oral evidence and certain exhibits, and he affirmed the decree of the Probate Court.
Martha A. Lake died in 1883 leaving a husband and three children, a son and two daughters, surviving her. The husband was duly appointed administrator and gave bond with sureties, and filed an inventory in which the property in question consisting of deposits represented by five different bank books in her name individually and as trustee in two savings banks in New
As already observed there was testimony tending to show that nine tenths of the deposits in question consisted of money furnished by Mr. Lake. There is no direct evidence where the rest of the money came from. There was testimony tending to show that the wife had some money. But the single justice may have deemed it more probable that these deposits also consisted of money belonging to Mr. Lake, and we cannot say that such a conclusion was erroneous or unwarranted. The result is that we think that the decree should be affirmecj.
¡So ordered.