Case ID: mich_41/html/0724-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

People ex rel. Charles B. Lothrop, adm’r v. Board of Public Works of Detroit.
    
      Administrator’s Sale of Intestate’s Lands — Plats.
    An administrator cannot make a public plat of his intestate’s lands under a probate license to sell them.
    An administrator’s sale of lands not platted may be made, with the probate court’s approval, by boundaries running with the centers of streets and conforming to streets and alleys to be opened by public authority, as far as they can be ascertained.
    Mandamus to compel respondent to sanction a plat of lands.
    Submitted October 21.
    Denied October 22.
    
      Charles B. Lothrop for the motion. ■
   Per Curiam.

Relator, who is special administrator of the estate of Denis J. Campau, and has procured a probate license to sell lands of the • estate, applied to the Board of Public Works to sanction a plat which he wished to complete according to the statute, so as to have the property disposed of in lots and blocks with streets regularly laid out and dedicated. The plat was laid out so as to accord with their views as to the proper location of streets, and was made to harmonize with the general plan which had met their approval. They declined to give it their official approval on the ground that relator had no legal authority to make the dedication.

In this we think they were right. Under the statutes —Comp. L., ch. 32; 1 Sess. L., 1873, p. 142 — no plat can be made except by the proprietor. Lee v. Lake, 14 Mich., 12. When properly executed and .acknowledged it operates to create interests and burdens which none 'but the owner can establish, and is for those purposes a conveyance. An administrator is in no sense the owner of the land of his intestate. The only authority he possesses is such as his license gives him, and it is in "the nature of a power, and not a proprietary interest. There may be cases in which it would be convenient to have lands laid out before a probate sale. No way •occurs to us as legal except the method sometimes resorted to of making sales by boundaries running with the centers of streets, and so arranged as to conform to the streets and alleys to be opened under public authority so far as they can be ascertained. That practice is frequently resorted to in probate sales and partitions, and if approved by the court would seem to be unobjectionable. But an administrator cannot make a statutory plat.

The mandamus must be denied.