Case ID: ny_246/html/0550-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

In the Matter of the Account of Proceedings of Boudinot Keith, as Administrator with the Will Annexed of Jane M. Boudinot, Deceased. Jane B. K. Colt, Appellant; Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, Respondent.
    
      Decedent’s estate — title — portrait bequeathed by will of testatrix ■ — ■ presumption of ownership from long-continued‘ possession.
    
    
      Matter of Boudinot, 220 App. Div. 715, affirmed.
    (Argued October 5, 1927;
    
    decided October 25, 1927.)
    Appeal, by permission, from an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial .department, entered April 29, 1927, which unanimously affirmed a decree of the New York County Surrogate’s Court awarding to the respondent herein a portrait bequeathed to it by the will of Jane M. Boudinot, deceased. The appellant contended that the portrait was not the property of the testatrix but was held by her as executrix of her mother in whose possession it was during her lifetime and who by her will bequeathed her pictures to her two daughters in equal shares. Letters testamentary were issued to Jane but she never filed any inventory, made any division of the pictures nor any accounting but remained in possession of the property until her death thirty-four years later. The surrogate held that no demand for an accounting or distribution having ever been made the presumption of ownership was with the testatrix.
    
      John Brooks Leavitt for appellant.
    
      George Gordon Battle and Addison A. Van Tine for respondent.
   Order affirmed, with costs; no opinion.

Concur: Cardozo, Ch. J., Pound, Crane, Andrews, Lehman, Kellogg and O’Brien, JJ.