Succession of Kennedy

2 Teiss. 65, 1904 La. App. LEXIS 111
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedDecember 27, 1904
DocketNo. 3590
StatusPublished

This text of 2 Teiss. 65 (Succession of Kennedy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Succession of Kennedy, 2 Teiss. 65, 1904 La. App. LEXIS 111 (La. Ct. App. 1904).

Opinion

MOORE, J.

The administration of the Succession of Thomas J. Kennedy applied for and obtained, upon making due proof of the necessity thereof, am ex parte order of Court, to sell all the movable and immovable effects belonging to the said Succession in order to pay debts, and thereunder all said property was sold. The realty consisted of eleven distinct pieces of improved city property each of which being burdened with mortgages in favor of different persons; each mortgage being of different dignity.

Two of these properties were mortgaged to the Algiers Savings Bank to secure the payment of a note made by the deceased on the 14th day of February, 1903, for the sum of $2,000.00, bearing 8 per cent, per annum interest from its date and payable six months after date. This note was subsequently transferred to the Interstate Bank and Trust Co., which still holds same. By partial payment on account, and for the interest due thereon up to the 14th day of August, 1904, to which date its maturity was extended, the amount due thereon was reduced to $1,650.00.

Subsequent to the Succession sale, (which took place nearly two months prior to the maturity of the note), and in order to convey the several properties to their respective adjudicatees under the Succession sale, free, of all mortgages placed thereon by the deceased and to refer same to the proceeds of sale, the Administra-trix took a rule to that end contradictorily with the Recorder of Mortgages and all the mortgaged creditors, the Interstate Bank among the number. In answer to this rule the Interstate Bank sets up the nullity of the sale because, Hrst, the order of sale was obtained by the Administratrix within 30 days after her appointment; second, that the order was obtained ex parte, and, third because the probate Court had ordered the sale of the hypothecated property on terms different from those which the mortgagee is entitled to fix, “and which terms so fixed by the order injuriously affect the mortgagee,”

The rule of the Administrix was maintained and from the judg[67]*67ment so ordering the Bank appeals.

I.

Articles i [64 and 1165 of the Civil Code, which provides that Succession representatives must wait thirty days after his appointment 'before demanding the sale of immovables belonging to the succession, which he is administering, to pay debts, specifically states the reason for the necessity of this delay, to-wit: “in order that he may know from the information he may get concerning the debts of the Succession, if it be necessary to sell them, (the immovables, in order to pay debts.”

As these 'provisions are merely in aid of the -Succession representative’s acquisition of that knowledge, it is manifest, in our opinion, that if he can obtain, and does obtain, the requisite information before the expiration of that delay there ceases to be a necessity for him to longer wait.

I the case at bar the Anministratrix had obtained the amount and character of the debts of the deceased and filed a tableau of them on the faith of which she claimed the order of sale.

It is not pretended that this tableau does not contain a true statement of the debts, neither is it suggested that there was no necessity for the sale of the immovables, nor is it shown that any injury resulted to the mortgage creditors by what is termed the premature issuance of the order of sale. There was no right which the appellant, the Interstate Bank, might have asserted, Which by the issuance of this order within 30 days of the Administra-trix’s appointment, it was prevented from asserting; nor can it be claimed,. even, that if the Administratrix had waited the expiration of the 30 days after her appointment before applying for the order, the mortgage creditor could have issued executory process on its mortgage, because its debts did not mature until some three months after her appointment.

II.

It is the first and paramount duty of Succession representatives [68]*68to watch over the interest of creditors and to see to and provide for the payment of their just claims against the Succession which they represent, and to that end they are vested by law with full power to provoke the sale of the personal, and if need be the immovable property of the Succession. C. C. 1668-1670, and this whether the immovalble be mortgaged or unincumbered. •

Whilst the right of the Succession representative to provoke -the sale of mortgaged property is not exclusive in them yets if the mortgage creditor does not proceed via execution, nor by application in the mortuary proceedings, the Succession representative may initiate and perfect the sale by obtaining an order therefor as the representative of all creditors. Suc. of Hood, 33 An. 470; Walmsby vs. Levy, 36 An. 226; and, under exceptional circumstances, an executory creditor may, even after an order of sale has been obtained in the Succession, but of course before the sale of the property, procure an order of seizure and sale and sell the property to the exclusion of the Succession representative. Sue. Adam Thompson, 42 An. 120; Levy and Carter Syndics vs. Thompson, 48 A. 537.

But there is neither law nor jurisprudence which requires for the validity of a sale of mortgaged property by the Succession representative, to pay debts, that the order be obtained contradictorily with the mortgage creditors and that other than such notice which they have from the application for the appointment of a representative for the Succession and the advertisement of tire sale, they are entitled to special notice of the application to sell. French vs. Prieur, 6 R. 299, is the only case where, after a Succession sale of mortgaged property, and on a rule sued out to cancel the mortgage, the view was expressed that "it would seem but just that they (the mortgage creditors) should have some notice of an application to sell that on which their lien exists.” This expression was pure obiter¡ as no such question was 'before the ■Court. The rule to cancel the mortgage was sued out in that case [69]*69against the Recorder of 'Mortgages alone. His answer was that being a ministerial officer, it is not his duty, or within his province to decide whether the mortgage should be cancelled and erased, or not, and 'he asked to be discharged. The only question presented to the Court and the only one urged 'by the Recorder, who was the appellant, (the brief of his counsel being printed in full on the report), was the right to proceed against him without making tire mortgage creditor a party to the rule. The 'Court held that the latter was a necessary party and. dismissed the rule.

But be that as it may this doctrine has never been followed, but the contrary has been repeatedly held. In Tertrou vs. Comeau, Sheriff, et al., 28 A. 633, a mortgage creditor enjoined the sale of the property which had been ordered sold by the probate Court on the -application of the Administrator of the estate to which the property 'belonged. The ground urged was the nullity of the order “because, if the estate is solvent, notice of the application to sell must be given to the 'heirs, and reasonable notice be given to the interested parties; because, if the succession is insolvent, the administrator being the trustee of the creditors, his first duty is to them and all proceedings for the sale of the property must be carried on contradictorily with them; and because the order which forms the basis of the advertisement and of the proposed sale is ex parte,

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Bluebook (online)
2 Teiss. 65, 1904 La. App. LEXIS 111, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/succession-of-kennedy-lactapp-1904.