Stiffler's Estate
Stiffler's Estate
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
1. We agree with the construction placed by the court below upon rule No. 40 of its rules of court. It is, in terms, restricted to cases where the answer filed by the garnishee denies that he has assets in his hands liable to the attachment. The answer filed by appellants, as executors of Peter Stiffler, deceased, admitted that they had moneys in their hands belonging to said estate, and payable upon the settlement of the estate to the creditors of Peter Stiffler, or to his heirs, of whom the defendant in the judgment, A. H. Stiffler, was one; but averred that until the debts had been paid and the estate settled it could not be determined how much thereof, if any, the said defendant, A. H. Stiffler, would be entitled to. The plaintiff was not required to traverse such an answer and his failure to do so did not automatically dissolve the attachment, under said rule of court.
2. The attachment in execution issued upon appellee’s judgment was not affected by the scire facias to revive said judgment and the entry of judgment therein. The plaintiff can have only one satisfaction but is entitled to all process necessary to obtain that: Tams v. Wardle, 5 W. & S. 222. The fact that she had issued an attachment execution on her judgment did not prevent her from keeping alive the lien of said judgment on any real estate owned by the defendant. The scire facias to revive was in no sense an abandonment of the attachment: Silver-
3. The plaintiff did not issue an alias attachment on the original judgment. She simply filed alias interrogatories in the attachment suit, which never having been dissolved was still in force.
4. At the hearing before the auditor, A. H. Stiffier, defendant in the attachment and one of the executors named as garnishees, testified that on March 12, 1909, the date the attachment was served on the executors of Peter Stiffier, deceased, the garnishees had no money coming to him in their hands, because some time previously,. upon the receipt by him of some proceeds of timber which they had sold Langham Bros, he had kept $1,213.26. It appeared in evidence that this amount was far in excess, not only of his share of the money received by the executors to that time, but also of his entire interest in the estate, including additional timber money and the purchase money of real estate subsequently sold which was received years later; that his
Furthermore, and what, in our opinion, is conclusive, is the fact that in the answer to the interrogatories filed by the garnishees on June 10,1911, no claim or mention is made that A. H. Stiffler had received or appropriated to his own use, any part or share of his father’s estate. On the contrary, the answer set forth that all of the property had not yet been sold and all of the debts had not yet been paid and until this was done and the estate settled it would be impossible to tell how much, if anything, A. H. Stiffler would be entitled to. This is not consistent with his present testimony. If an appropri
With this view of the case we are not called upon to decide the question whether one of two executors, who has received into his possession money belonging to the estate of his testator, may, without the knowledge or consent of his coexecutor, lawfully appropriate to his own use, before the debts are paid or the estate is settled, what he considers to be his share, not merely of the moneys so received to that date, but of the entire estate, converted and unconverted, so as to put his interest in the estate, accruing and received thereafter, beyond the reach of attachment process. Reference may be made to the following cases: Lorenz v. King, 38 Pa. 93; Zimmerman v. Briner, 50 Pa. 535; Bouslough v. Bouslough, 68 Pa. 495; Hemphill v. Yerkes, 132 Pa. 545, 553; Fagan’s Est., 34 W. N. C. 66, and Neely v. Grantham, supra.
We are of the opinion that the action of the learned court below in sustaining the exception to the auditor’s report was fully justified. The assignment of error is overruled and the decree, of the court below is affirmed at the costs of the appellants.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.