Case ID: misc_62/html/0597-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Ketcham, S.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Matter of the Judicial Settlement of the Account of Samuel H. Coombs et al., as Executors and Trustees under the Last Will and Testament of Robert W. Gleason, Deceased.
    (Surrogate’s Court, Kings County,
    March, 1909.)
    Life estates — Liabilities as between life tenants and remaindermen — Bight in general — Carrying unproductive property.
    The charges for carrying unimproved and unproductive property withheld by testamentary trustees from the market for the eventuy.1 benefit of the remainder, where the trustees have acted in the exercise of a sound discretion and the property has appreciated in value sufficiently to justify their management, should be charged upon the fund and not upon the income of the life tenant.
    Proceedings upon the judicial settlement of the accounts of executors.
    Robert H. Wilson, for executors.
    Eugene L. Richards, special guardian.
   Ketcham, S.

The trustees are right in imposing upon the fund, and not the income, the carrying charges of the unimproved and unproductive property which they have withheld from market for the eventual benefit of the remainder. Matter of Martens, 16 Misc. Rep. 245; see also opinion of Mr. Surrogate Belford, in Matter of Knapp, filed April 13, 1908.

These trustees have acted in the exercise of a sound discretion, and the lands above mentioned have all appreciated in-"value sufficiently to justify their management.

As to the Atlantic avenue lots, there is no evidence as to their improvement in value, and while in five years the disbursements have been $210.11 the rent for the last year has been fifty dollars. TJpon the evidence, no reason is perceived for laying the burdens of any part of these outlays upon the life tenant.

With the exception last noted, the objections are overruled.

Decreed accordingly.