ACCOUNT OF DEBTS. CHARITIES. 183 resorted to, inasmuch as all parties must concur in the case as stated, and they are seldom agreed upon the facts. And the Court is authorised, upon the application of executors or administrators, after the lapse of a year from the death of the deceased, by motion or petition of course, to take an account of the debts, and to provide for the payment of contingent debts; and when any other debts found to be due are paid, the executors or administrators are absolved from all further liability. This at the time was a great boon, as it enabled executors and administrators in a summary way to ascertain whether there were any outstanding liabilities, without giving to the Court the power to administer the whole of the estate; but it is not so important now that the regular proceedings in the Court of Chancery are rendered so much more simple than they were. In regard to the Charities of which you are a trustee, I must refer you to the statutes for the better administration of Charitable Trusts,* where you will see what acts you may do under the authority of the Board of Commissioners, and what control they have over you. There is an important provision which enables trustees of any charity to apply to the Board for their opinion, advice, or direction respecting the charity, or the property, or any question or dispute relating to it. The opinion or advice is to be in writing, signed by two or more of the Commissioners, and sealed with the seal of the Commission. If you act according to this opinion or advice, you will be deemed to have acted according to your trust as far as respects your own responsibility; but the Act will not indemnify you if you were to be guilty of any fraud, or wilful concealment or misrepresentation, in obtaining such opinion or advice. * 16 & 17 Vict., c. 137; 18 & 19 Vict., c. 124. 184 PROPOSED RELIEF TO TRUSTEES. It remains only for me to state to you the heads of the Bill for the Relief of Trustees, to which I have already referred, and which, or a better bill, will no doubt pass this session. The proposed enactments are-that, I. Where upon a breach of trust (the trustee, &c. acting with good faith) there is both a profit and a loss on the transaction, the one is to be set off against the other. The necessity for this provision is shown by the decision in the case which I have already stated to you (p. 171). II. Payments and acts by any trustee, executor, or administrator, under a power of attorney, are to be valid, although the person who gave the power was dead at the time of the payment or act, provided the trustee, &c. was ignorant of the death. (P. 178.) III. Gross negligence only to charge a trustee, &c. for neglect, where a testator has not directed the act to be done, although by the rules of equity it ought to have been done. IV. Trustee, &c. not to be liable for omission to sue on any bond or other personal security where the testator lent the money and did not call it in, unless required to do so by the persons entitled to the money. (P. 176.) V. Provision for releasing executors and administrators from liabilities to rents and covenants under leases. VI. Executors and administrators to be indemnified where they have acted in the distribution of the assets, as the Court would have done if a bill had been filed. (P. 177.) VII. Trustees, executors, and administrators, authorised in a summary way to apply for and act upon the advice of a judge in equity on any question respecting the PROPOSED RELIEF TO TRUSTEES. 185 management or administration of the trust property or the assets of any testator. VIII. But no breach of trust or duty is to be protected where the trustee, executor, or administrator, either directly or indirectly, derives from the act or matter constituting such breach of trust any personal benefit. If any of these provisions should pass into a law, you will not have much difficulty in ascertaining from which of the dangers pointed out in my last Letter you will be relieved in your character of a trustee. 186 TITLE ACQUIRED BY POSSESSION. LETTER XXIII. In all You are aware, no doubt, that no real property, lands or houses, can pass otherwise than by grant by deed for money, or for some good consideration, blood or friendship for example, for you may convey away your estate to whom you please; or by descent or devise, whereas mere personal property will pass by delivery from hand to hand. But yet there is a mode in which a man may acquire real property without paying for it or receiving it as a gift, or inheriting it by descent. This, at first sight, may appear singular to you. It is by what I may call adverse possession, which now is a possession by a person not the owner during a certain number of years without acknowledgment of the right of the real owner, and yet not necessarily in open defiance of him. times, great weight has been given to long-continued possession, in order to put a period to litigation. us, the periods and nature of the possession depend altogether on acts of the Legislature,* and now even charities may be bound by nonclaim. Constant claims are set up to the estates of other men by poor and ignorant, and sometimes by crafty persons, although generally the latter support the claims of the former, where they think they can work upon the credulity of mankind. Some remarkable instances of fraudulent claims which have happened in recent times will recur to your memory. I call your recollection to them in order to guard you against such frauds; for these claims, when specious * 3 & 4 Will. IV., c. 27. With TWENTY YEARS' POSSESSION A TITLE. 187 ones, are made the subject of bargains and wagers in the city, and the claimants held up as persons who have been stripped of their rights by the wealthy, and are deserving of public sympathy. I have myself seen an office open for a considerable period in a great thoroughfare in the immediate vicinity of Westminster Hall, for the sale of shares in an estate claimed by a person who, to meet the expenses of law proceedings, was willing to allow subscribers to participate largely in the profits of the estate when acquired. Great numbers of persons were cheated by this scheme, which was clearly an illegal one. And, in point of fact, to my knowledge, the right to the estate in question had, long before this sale of shares in it, been the subject of litigation, and had been adjudged to belong to persons whose right to it could not be disputed by further litigation. You will quickly see how impossible it is that any really stale claim can succeed. When the time has arrived that bars the remedy, the right of the claimant out of possession is actually extinguished, and even the rights of the Crown may be extinguished by continued possession.* The common remedy is now by the action of ejectment, which simple remedy is a great relief to the subject, and the common time for asserting the right of action is 20 years. The claimant's remedy, therefore, will be barred by mere possession by another, without payment of rent or acknowledgment, if his right of entry accrued above 20 years before the ejectment. If the right of entry first belongs to you; for example, if you are in possession of the property, or in receipt of the profits, and discontinue such possession or receipt, the 20 years will begin to run from such discontinuance. Where there has been no possession or receipt under a * 9 Geo. III., c. 16, English Act; 48 Geo. III., c. 47, Irish Act. |