| ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES – Intending administrator – Rights – Property of deceased – Person intending to exercise right to apply for letters of administration – Whether having enforceable right to immediate possession of deceased’s documents as against person in actual possession
Caudle v LD Law Ltd [2008] EWHC 374 (QB); WLR (D) 78
QBD: Wyn Williams J: 29 February 2008
A person who intends to exercise his entitlement to apply for a grant of letters of administration of an estate does not have an enforceable right to immediate possession of property formerly owned by the deceased unless it is necessary that he takes possession to safeguard the estate.
Wyn Williams J so held when dismissing an appeal by the claimant, Anthony Paul Caudle, against a decision of Judge Riddell in the Edmonton County Court on 8 June 2007, refusing to order the defendant, LD Law Ltd, to deliver up possession of documents to the claimant.
WYN WILLIAMS J said that various papers which had belonged to the deceased had been supplied by the deceased’s parents to the defendant company, a provider of legal services, which had been asked to assist them to obtain a grant of letters of administration to the estate. Shortly afterwards the claimant, who was the deceased’s ex-husband, had indicated an intention to apply for a grant, and his entitlement had priority over that of the deceased’s parents. In response to the claimant’s request for the papers the defendant had refused to deliver them up, contending, first, that it had a lien over them because the deceased owed the defendant £1,633 for legal services provided in her matrimonial proceedings, and contending, secondly, that the claimant had no enforceable right to immediate possession of the papers. The judge in the county court had rejected the first of those contentions, but had upheld the second. The general position was that an intending administrator could do nothing until letters of administration had been granted to him, and meanwhile the deceased’s property vested in the Public Trustee. Although there was no previous judicial authority for the proposition, it had been correctly stated in Sherrin and Bonehill : Law and Practice of Intestate Succession, 3rd ed (2004), that “the powers of an administrator to act before grant are exceptional and limited in effect to essential actions to preserve and protect the deceased’s estate”. On the facts, the claimant did not need the documents to protect the estate, and he had not otherwise acquired an immediate right to possession of them.
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