Case ID: va_14/html/0943-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Chancellor.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

M’Rae v. Farrow.
    Spring Vacation,
    1809.
    Executors — Sale of Land by One of Three under General Direction of Will — Validity.—a conveyance of land by two out ol three executors, all of whom qualified and were liying, (the testator having directed the sale and conveyance by his executors, in general terms.) is not valid in law, and cannot be aided in equity: nor would the payment of the pnrchase-money, in such case, create any lien on the land.
    In this case these questions occurred: 1. Whether a conveyance by two of three executors, all of whom had qualified and were living, (the testator having directed the sale and conveyance to be made by his executors, in general terms,) was valid in law? 2. If it was not, could it be aided in equity? and, 3. If it could not, did the purchase-money, if paid, create a lien on the land, which would subject it in equity to the repayment of the money?
    
      
      Joint Executors — Sale of Land by One — Validity.— In Glasgow v. Lipse, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 759. 117 U. S. 327, it is said: “The power to sell the land being vested in the two executors, their joint execution of the deed would have been necessary to transfer the title, had not the act of the legislature in Virginia of the fifth of March, 1863, provided that whenever any fiduciary residing in that state had been authorized to exercise any power, or to do any act jointly with one or more fiduciaries residing within the limits of the United States, (meaning thereby in those states without the limits of the Confederacy,) it should be lawful for the fiduciary resident in the state to exercise such power and do such act without the concurrence of the nonresident fiduciary, and that the act should have the same force and effect as if it was the joint action of all the fiduciaries. M'llaev. Farrow, 4 lien. & ¡W. 441.”
      See monographic note on “Executors and Administrators” appended to Rosser v. Depriest, 5 Gratt. 6.
    
   By the Chancellor.

Upon the first question, I think the law was rightly settled in this case, in the old General Court, in April, 1774, that the conveyance was not valid, and the maxim is that equity follows the law: and, therefore, upon the second question, the plaintiff cannot be aided iu this Court. And as to the third question, if the purchase-money was paid, it created no lien upon the land, because the plaintiff neither derived a legal nor an equitable right thereto: and he must be left to his remedy at law. _ _