236 S.W. 805 | Tex. App. | 1922
While the estate of J. N. Krawietz, deceased was in process of administration in the probate court of Karnes county, E. J. and L. L. Krawietz each filed claims against the estate with the administrator, who approved and ordered them paid. Subsequently the claimants filed a joint motion for leave to withdraw these claims, alleging that, at the time the claims were filed, approved, and ordered paid, they "were each laboring under a misapprehension of fact and of law as to their just and lawful rights as against said estate, and that said accounts do not represent the true amount that said estate is due them," and prayed that they be permitted to withdraw the accounts "that they may in due time and manner present their just claims as against said estate."
Frank Kneiski and others, admitted to be heirs at law and interested in the estate, filed a contest of the application to withdraw the claims, upon the grounds that the claims had been regularly, authenticated, filed, heard, allowed, ordered paid, transferred to others, and paid, and cannot now be set aside in a collateral attack, and that the probate court was without power to allow their withdrawal.
The proponents of the motion challenged the right of Kneiski and his associates to contest the same, insisted that the record did not show a legal allowance and adjudication of the claims, or final judgment thereon, and denied that they had transferred the claims, or that the latter had been paid. The county court denied the application to withdraw the claims. The Krawietzes appealed to the district court, in which judgment was again rendered against them.
Appellees, as heirs at law of the deceased, and being interested in the estate, clearly had a right, under the authority of the statute, to appear and contest the application to withdraw the claim. Rev.St. 1911, art. 3236; Pena Vidaurri's Estate v. Bruni,
In general terms it may be said that appellants' position is that there has been no final judgment upon their claims in the county court, and that to withdraw their claims would amount simply to a nonsuit, which is permissible at any time before entry of final judgment. They contend that the notation on his probate docket by the county judge, of the approval of the claim, is not a judgment "entered of record," and that the judgment in fact becomes final "only upon the court's approval and allowance in the probate claim docket or the entry of the court's disposition of the claim as a judgment in the minutes of the probate court"; that, as the order allowing the claim, and ordering It paid, was not entered in the minutes of the probate court, it was "a nullity" under articles 3218 and 3219, which are as follows: *806
Article 3218. "All decisions, orders, decrees, and judgments of the county court in probate matters shall be rendered in open court, and at a regular term of such court for civil and probate business, unless in cases where it is otherwise specially provided."
Article 3219. "All such decisions, orders, decrees and judgments shall be entered on the records of the court, during the term at which the same are rendered; and any such decision, order, decree or judgment shall be a nullity unless entered of record."
An order of a probate court allowing a claim regularly presented is a final judgment. It is expressly made so by statute (article 3452), as well as the decisions. Williams v. Robinson,
We hold, then, that the matters here sought to be disturbed have been reduced to a final judgment, binding alike upon the estate and the claimants. It cannot at a subsequent term be set aside, or otherwise affected in a collateral proceeding, or in any other way than by a direct proceeding brought for that purpose in the district court. Neill v. Hodge,
The judgment is affirmed.