CALLAHAN, C. J.
The issue in this appeal is whether a finder’s fee for the recovery of property paid to the plaintiff, Marcelle Hall, the executrix of the estate of Julian Leon Altman (decedent), by an insurer, Lloyd’s of London (Lloyd’s), in exchange for the surrender by the plaintiff of a violin possessed by the decedent at the time of his death should be included in his estate or should belong to the plaintiff individually. The plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the trial court that the finder’s fee was required to be included in the decedent’s estate. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
This is the saga of the mysterious disappearance of a 1713 Stradivarius violin known as the “Gibson” from Carnegie Hall in 1936 and its reappearance in Bethel after the decedent’s death in 1985. Although the long lost Gibson has been recovered, precisely what occurred at Carnegie Hall in 1936 remains clouded by the passage of time and a dying man’s death bed equivocation.1
The decedent died a resident of Bethel on August 12, 1985, leaving a last will and testament.2 Thereafter, on October 15,1985, the plaintiff, the decedent’s wife, was appointed executrix of his estate. On May 15, 1986, she filed an Inventory and S-2 Succession Tax Return reflecting estate assets of $39,624.44. The Connecticut [555]*555department of revenue services issued a certificate of no tax due on June 6, 1986, subject to the case being reopened if additional transfers were discovered.3 Subsequently, the Bethel Probate Court ordered the plaintiff to file an interim accounting based on complaints made by the defendant, Sherry Altman Schoenwetter, the decedent’s daughter and a legatee under his will.4 The plaintiff filed the interim accounting on February 6, 1991. The defendant objected to the plaintiffs omission from the accounting of a finder’s fee in the amount of $263,475.75 received by the plaintiff from Lloyd’s in exchange for the violin.
The Bethel Probate Court conducted hearings to determine the validity of the defendant’s objection. On the basis of the evidence presented, the court sustained the objection, and ordered the plaintiff to file a new accounting that included the finder’s fee and to post a bond in the amount of $300,000. The plaintiff appealed from the Probate Court’s judgment to the Superior Court pursuant to General Statutes § 45a-186.5 After a [556]*556trial,6 the Superior Court affirmed the Probate Court’s judgment and ordered the plaintiff to include the finder’s fee plus interest in the decedent’s estate. The plaintiff appealed from the judgment of the trial court to the Appellate Court, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199 (c).7
The Bethel probate judge made findings of fact, which the trial court adopted and supplemented with other findings gleaned from testimony received at trial. Sometime after 1970, the plaintiff began a relationship with the decedent in Washington, D.C. From the beginning of the relationship until his death, the decedent, a professional musician, possessed a violin that he played at recitals, concerts and, more often, at various restaurants and hotels. In 1983, the couple moved to Bethel. They eventually married in 1985, sometime after doctors had diagnosed the decedent as having stomach cancer. The plaintiff made several visits to the decedent, whose health was failing rapidly, at Charlotte-Hungerford Hospital in Torrington where he was receiving treatment. Shortly before he died, the decedent revealed to the plaintiff that the violin he had played throughout his life was actually a famous Stradivarius violin known as the Gibson. The Gibson had been stolen in 1936 from the dressing room of a world renowned violinist named Bronislaw Huberman while Huberman was performing [557]*557at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Lloyd’s, the insurer of the Gibson, paid Huberman approximately $30,000 to compensate him for the loss of the violin, and thereby acquired title to the instrument. The police never solved the crime.
After the decedent’s death, the plaintiff obtained verification that the instrument was indeed the long lost Gibson. She then retained an attorney who negotiated the relinquishment of the violin to Lloyd’s, in exchange for which Lloyd’s agreed to pay the plaintiff a finder’s fee of 25 percent of the net proceeds brought by the sale of the violin. On February 12,1988, the Gibson was sold for $1,200,000. Thereafter, on February 26, 1988, Lloyd’s paid the plaintiff $263,475.75 as a finder’s fee.
In response to the defendant’s objection to the plaintiffs failure to include the finder’s fee in the decedent’s estate, the plaintiff claimed that, based on statements made to her by the decedent and newspaper clippings found in the canvass case that housed the violin, it was the decedent who had stolen the violin from Huberman in 1936.8 The plaintiff argued consequently that, because [558]*558a thief should not benefit from his crime, neither should his estate. She contended therefore that the finder’s fee should not be included among the estate’s assets. Although in its memorandum of decision the trial court made no specific finding that the decedent actually had stolen the violin, the court quoted at length from the plaintiffs testimony, in which she asserted that the decedent was in fact the thief, and appeared to proceed on the assumption that the decedent had acquired the violin illegally.9 The trial court concluded, however, that because the violin, no matter how acquired, had been in the decedent’s possession at the time of his death, and because the plaintiff had acquired it in her capacity as executrix, she had a fiduciary duty to include the value of the finder’s fee in the decedent’s estate.
In her arguments to this court, the plaintiff essentially repeats those made in the trial court. The plaintiff contends that, because the decedent stole the violin, he never acquired good title to the instrument and, therefore, the finder’s fee was not an asset of the estate for which the plaintiff was required to account. The plaintiff attempts to distance this case from the hornbook proposition that “possession is itself a protected property right.”10 She argues that she simply did the right thing when she returned the violin to Lloyd’s, its rightful owner. We find the plaintiffs arguments unpersuasive.
Initially, we note the unsurprising paucity of case law, both in Connecticut and nationwide, pertinent to the issue before us. To reach our decision, we turn to fundamental concepts of fiduciary responsibility and [559]*559property law. At all times subsequent to her appointment as executrix, the plaintiff served as a fiduciary for the decedent’s estate. See General Statutes § 45a-199 (executrix is fiduciary); see also Papa v. New Haven Federation of Teachers, 186 Conn. 725, 745 n.15, 444 A.2d 196 (1982) (fiduciary includes relationships such as executor and executrix). An executrix has a fiduciary responsibility “to maintain an undivided loyalty to the estate”; Ramsdell v. Union Trust Co., 202 Conn. 57, 65, 519 A.2d 1185 (1987); and must diligently represent “the rights of the heirs and distributees and also those of creditors.”
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CALLAHAN, C. J.
The issue in this appeal is whether a finder’s fee for the recovery of property paid to the plaintiff, Marcelle Hall, the executrix of the estate of Julian Leon Altman (decedent), by an insurer, Lloyd’s of London (Lloyd’s), in exchange for the surrender by the plaintiff of a violin possessed by the decedent at the time of his death should be included in his estate or should belong to the plaintiff individually. The plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the trial court that the finder’s fee was required to be included in the decedent’s estate. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
This is the saga of the mysterious disappearance of a 1713 Stradivarius violin known as the “Gibson” from Carnegie Hall in 1936 and its reappearance in Bethel after the decedent’s death in 1985. Although the long lost Gibson has been recovered, precisely what occurred at Carnegie Hall in 1936 remains clouded by the passage of time and a dying man’s death bed equivocation.1
The decedent died a resident of Bethel on August 12, 1985, leaving a last will and testament.2 Thereafter, on October 15,1985, the plaintiff, the decedent’s wife, was appointed executrix of his estate. On May 15, 1986, she filed an Inventory and S-2 Succession Tax Return reflecting estate assets of $39,624.44. The Connecticut [555]*555department of revenue services issued a certificate of no tax due on June 6, 1986, subject to the case being reopened if additional transfers were discovered.3 Subsequently, the Bethel Probate Court ordered the plaintiff to file an interim accounting based on complaints made by the defendant, Sherry Altman Schoenwetter, the decedent’s daughter and a legatee under his will.4 The plaintiff filed the interim accounting on February 6, 1991. The defendant objected to the plaintiffs omission from the accounting of a finder’s fee in the amount of $263,475.75 received by the plaintiff from Lloyd’s in exchange for the violin.
The Bethel Probate Court conducted hearings to determine the validity of the defendant’s objection. On the basis of the evidence presented, the court sustained the objection, and ordered the plaintiff to file a new accounting that included the finder’s fee and to post a bond in the amount of $300,000. The plaintiff appealed from the Probate Court’s judgment to the Superior Court pursuant to General Statutes § 45a-186.5 After a [556]*556trial,6 the Superior Court affirmed the Probate Court’s judgment and ordered the plaintiff to include the finder’s fee plus interest in the decedent’s estate. The plaintiff appealed from the judgment of the trial court to the Appellate Court, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199 (c).7
The Bethel probate judge made findings of fact, which the trial court adopted and supplemented with other findings gleaned from testimony received at trial. Sometime after 1970, the plaintiff began a relationship with the decedent in Washington, D.C. From the beginning of the relationship until his death, the decedent, a professional musician, possessed a violin that he played at recitals, concerts and, more often, at various restaurants and hotels. In 1983, the couple moved to Bethel. They eventually married in 1985, sometime after doctors had diagnosed the decedent as having stomach cancer. The plaintiff made several visits to the decedent, whose health was failing rapidly, at Charlotte-Hungerford Hospital in Torrington where he was receiving treatment. Shortly before he died, the decedent revealed to the plaintiff that the violin he had played throughout his life was actually a famous Stradivarius violin known as the Gibson. The Gibson had been stolen in 1936 from the dressing room of a world renowned violinist named Bronislaw Huberman while Huberman was performing [557]*557at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Lloyd’s, the insurer of the Gibson, paid Huberman approximately $30,000 to compensate him for the loss of the violin, and thereby acquired title to the instrument. The police never solved the crime.
After the decedent’s death, the plaintiff obtained verification that the instrument was indeed the long lost Gibson. She then retained an attorney who negotiated the relinquishment of the violin to Lloyd’s, in exchange for which Lloyd’s agreed to pay the plaintiff a finder’s fee of 25 percent of the net proceeds brought by the sale of the violin. On February 12,1988, the Gibson was sold for $1,200,000. Thereafter, on February 26, 1988, Lloyd’s paid the plaintiff $263,475.75 as a finder’s fee.
In response to the defendant’s objection to the plaintiffs failure to include the finder’s fee in the decedent’s estate, the plaintiff claimed that, based on statements made to her by the decedent and newspaper clippings found in the canvass case that housed the violin, it was the decedent who had stolen the violin from Huberman in 1936.8 The plaintiff argued consequently that, because [558]*558a thief should not benefit from his crime, neither should his estate. She contended therefore that the finder’s fee should not be included among the estate’s assets. Although in its memorandum of decision the trial court made no specific finding that the decedent actually had stolen the violin, the court quoted at length from the plaintiffs testimony, in which she asserted that the decedent was in fact the thief, and appeared to proceed on the assumption that the decedent had acquired the violin illegally.9 The trial court concluded, however, that because the violin, no matter how acquired, had been in the decedent’s possession at the time of his death, and because the plaintiff had acquired it in her capacity as executrix, she had a fiduciary duty to include the value of the finder’s fee in the decedent’s estate.
In her arguments to this court, the plaintiff essentially repeats those made in the trial court. The plaintiff contends that, because the decedent stole the violin, he never acquired good title to the instrument and, therefore, the finder’s fee was not an asset of the estate for which the plaintiff was required to account. The plaintiff attempts to distance this case from the hornbook proposition that “possession is itself a protected property right.”10 She argues that she simply did the right thing when she returned the violin to Lloyd’s, its rightful owner. We find the plaintiffs arguments unpersuasive.
Initially, we note the unsurprising paucity of case law, both in Connecticut and nationwide, pertinent to the issue before us. To reach our decision, we turn to fundamental concepts of fiduciary responsibility and [559]*559property law. At all times subsequent to her appointment as executrix, the plaintiff served as a fiduciary for the decedent’s estate. See General Statutes § 45a-199 (executrix is fiduciary); see also Papa v. New Haven Federation of Teachers, 186 Conn. 725, 745 n.15, 444 A.2d 196 (1982) (fiduciary includes relationships such as executor and executrix). An executrix has a fiduciary responsibility “to maintain an undivided loyalty to the estate”; Ramsdell v. Union Trust Co., 202 Conn. 57, 65, 519 A.2d 1185 (1987); and must diligently represent “the rights of the heirs and distributees and also those of creditors.” Finnegan v. LaFontaine, 122 Conn. 561, 567, 191 A. 337 (1937). Although executors and administrators are not trustees, they “occupy a position in many respects analogous [to trustees] . . . and many of the rules determining the powers and duties of trustees apply to them.” Hall v. Meriden Trust & Safe Deposit Co., 103 Conn. 226, 233, 130 A. 157 (1925). “One of the most fundamental duties of the trustee is that he must display throughout the administration of the trust complete loyalty to the interests of the cestui que trust. He must exclude all selfish interest and also all consideration of . . . third persons.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Phillips v. Moeller, 148 Conn. 361, 369, 170 A.2d 897 (1961). “A trustee must always be loyal to his trust.” Conway v. Emeny, 139 Conn. 612, 621, 96 A.2d 221 (1953). Similarly, an executrix must remain loyal to the estate that she is administering and must not act out of self-interest or for the interests of parties other than the heirs, distributees, and creditors of the estate.
General Statutes § 45a-341 (a)11 requires executors and executrices to gather, appraise, and inventory all [560]*560property of the decedent’s estate at the time of his death, except real property located outside the state. Section 45a-341 (a) (3) provides that the inventory of a decedent’s estate shall include both tangible and intangible personal property. This court has stated that “[t]he estate of a deceased person consists of property the title to or an interest in which is derived from him . . . American Surety Co. of New York v. McMullen, 129 Conn. 575, 582-83, 30 A.2d 564 (1943). “The inventory of an estate may properly contain any property which may be claimed to have belonged to the deceased when the circumstances are such as to make the matter of his title doubtful, leaving the question of title to be litigated in an ordinary action at law.” Searle v. Crampton, 118 Conn. 42, 46, 170 A. 480 (1934); see also Lynch v. Skelly, 138 Conn. 376, 378, 85 A.2d 251 (1951).
Under the common law, possession of personal property raises a rebuttable presumption of ownership.12 [561]*56173 C.J.S. 237, Property § 36 (b) (1983); see Savannah Bank & Trust Co. v. Great American Indemnity Co., 303 F.2d 247, 250 (1st Cir. 1962); Commonwealth v. Gildea, 17 Mass. App. 177, 181, 456 N.E.2d 1157 (1983); State v. Campos, 61 N.M. 392, 393, 301 P.2d 329 (1956); People v. Florus, 67 Misc. 2d 809, 812, 325 N.Y.S.2d 127 (1971); Matter of Estate of Burns, 585 P.2d 1126, 1130 (Okla. App. 1978). Property in the possession of a decedent at the time of his death is presumptively an asset of his estate. 33 C.J.S. 1083, Executors and Administrators § 125 (1942); see Hurley v. Noone, 347 Mass. 182, 187-88, 196 N.E.2d 905 (1964) (decedent’s possession of currency in safe deposit box established prima facie case of her ownership); Matter of Buckler, 227 App. Div. 146, 149, 237 N.Y.S. 242 (1929) (decedent’s possession of certain currency before death established prima facie case of her ownership thereof); Haywood v. Kukuchka, 55 Wyo. 41, 45, 95 P.2d 71 (1939) (decedent’s possession of car, along with other indicia of title, established prima [562]*562facie case of ownership); see also Hope v. Cavallo, 163 Conn. 576, 581, 316 A.2d 407 (1972) (“[owner] is not a technical term and, thus, is not confined to a person who has the absolute right in a chattel, but also applies to a person who has possession and control thereof’); Antenucci v. Hartford Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., 142 Conn. 349, 355, 114 A.2d 216 (1955) (party in possession of real property regarded as owner except in contest with true title holder); Chapel-High Corp. v. Cavallaro, 141 Conn. 407, 411, 106 A.2d 720 (1954) (same).
Once the Probate Court appointed the plaintiff executrix of the decedent’s estate, the plaintiff undertook a fiduciary duty obligating her to act in the best interests of the estate and the distributees of the decedent’s will, which included the defendant and the decedent’s sister. Section 45a-341 (a) (1) required the plaintiff to gather and inventory all of the decedent’s property so that a proper distribution of his estate might be made. The violin, having been in the possession of the decedent at the time of his death, was an asset of his estate. The plaintiff therefore should have included the finder’s fee, the realized value of the violin, in the decedent’s estate regardless of whether the decedent had an unassailable title to the instrument during his lifetime. See General Statutes § 45a-341 (a) (1) and (4). Instead of doing so, however, the plaintiff violated her fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the estate by retaining the finder’s fee for herself. Rather than increasing the value of the decedent’s estate — which would have benefited the decedent’s distributees and creditors, in whose best interests the plaintiff was bound to act — the plaintiff disregarded her fiduciary duty and enriched herself by exchanging a possession of the estate for the finder’s fee.13
[563]*563The plaintiffs argument that a thief should not benefit from his crime strikes a dissonant note in light of the facts of this case. Although morally compelling in the abstract, the plaintiffs argument is logically inconsistent with her actions since, by negotiating for and accepting the finder’s fee on her own behalf, the plaintiff appropriated to herself, in breach of her fiduciary duty, whatever value the violin had to the estate. It has long been a principle of common law that “[t]he party in possession [of property] is regarded by the law as the owner, except in a contest with one who has true title.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Antenucci v. Hartford Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., supra, 142 Conn. 355; Chapel-High Corp. v. Cavallaro, supra, 141 Conn. 411; see also Anderson v. Gouldberg, 51 Minn. 294, 295, 53 N.W. 636 (1892), citing Armory v. Delamirie, 1 Strange 504, 93 Eng. Rep. 664 (1722). In a suit by a possessor of property against a converter, the converter may not defend by asserting that a third person is the true title holder of the property unless the converter is in privity of title with the third person. See Russell v. Stocking, 8 Conn. 236, 241-42 (1830); Goss v. Bisset, 411 S.W.2d 50, 53 (Ky. App. 1967); Thomsen v. State, 70 Wash. 2d 92, 97-98, 422 P.2d 824 (1966); see also R. Boyer, Survey of Property (3d Ed. 1981) pp. 683-84. The plaintiff had no right or title to the violin except as executrix, and she certainly was not in privity with Lloyd’s. The plaintiff attempts to distinguish the present case from those cases holding that the first thief prevails in an action against the second thief by noting that in [564]*564this case the rightful owner, Lloyd’s, eventually received the property. That the rightful owner eventually recovered the stolen property does not change the fact that the plaintiff, in her individual capacity, never had any right whatsoever to the violin. The only possible party that possessed better title than the decedent was Lloyd’s. The plaintiff, however, did not accede to the interest of Lloyd’s or acquire privity of title with Lloyd’s when she misappropriated the violin from the estate.14
In sum, the plaintiff as executrix was under a fiduciary duty to act not in her own self-interest, but in the best interests of the estate. She failed to do so and she may not justify the breach of her fiduciary duty in 1988 by virtue of the fact that the decedent may have stolen the violin in 1936. No matter how the Gibson was obtained, it was a possession of the decedent’s estate, and once the plaintiff chose to negotiate with Lloyd’s for the finder’s fee her fiduciary duty required that she negotiate on behalf of the estate, not herself.
The judgment is affirmed.
[565]*565In this opinion NORCOTT, MCDONALD and PETERS, Js., concurred.