Opinion ID: 2109859
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The alleged irregularities in the orphans' court

Text: Code (1957, 1969 Repl. Vol.) Art. 93, § 1-101, § 5-406 and § 5-407, when read together, make it abundantly clear that a determination made by an orphans' court in a proceeding for judicial probate may only be challenged by a personal representative, a legatee or an heir within 18 months of the death of the decedent. Mr. Preissman is none of these, and consequently has no standing. Moreover, we were told at argument that the legatees who were alleged to have been improperly served had actual notice. In any event, none of them challenged the proceeding during the 18 month period. Mr. Preissman would add to his arsenal of weapons an attack on the constitutionality of the notice given under Art. 93, § 5-403, which incorporates the requirements of § 1-103, alleging that the acceptance of certified mail return receipts signed in two instances by persons having the same surname as, but a given name different from, that of the legatee addressed was clearly violative of Fourteenth Amendment rights of due process, relying on Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 70 S.Ct. 652, 94 L.Ed. 865 (1950). This can be no more than an academic exercise, in part because the clear holding of Mullane was that while notice by publication was insufficient as regards beneficiaries whose names and addresses were known to the trustee, notice by ordinary mail would suffice, but primarily because Mr. Preissman, who is neither one of the legatees nor acting in their behalf, does not have the standing of an interested person required by Art. 93, § 5-407. In Stanley v. Safe Deposit Co., 88 Md. 401, 41 A. 790 (1898), an attack was made on the adequacy of notice given prior to the admission of a will to probate. Our predecessors held that if it appeared to the orphans' court that such reasonable notice was given, it took jurisdiction of the probate and that once a question was finally determined by the orphans' court in the exercise of its jurisdiction, there could be no collateral attack on the regularity of the proceeding. Even before the adoption of Art. 93 in its present form, it was the rule that when the orphans' court had jurisdiction its order could not be assailed in a collateral proceeding for error in procedure. Stated otherwise, this means that a sale is insulated from collateral attack unless wholly void, 34 C.J.S. Executors and Administrators § 618, at 597 (1942). Van Bibber v. Reese, 71 Md. 608, 18 A. 892 (1889) was a case in which a contract purchaser of real estate bought from a devisee refused to perform his contract on the ground that the executrix had failed to comply with the provision requiring that notice be given to creditors. Our predecessors held that a bona fide purchaser is entitled to rely on orphans' court records which showed a final settlement of the personal estate and the payment of debts and expenses of administration. Under such circumstances, he takes the property free of equities of which he had no actual or constructive notice. The order decreeing specific performance by the purchaser was affirmed. To the same effect was the holding in Simpson v. Bailey, 80 Md. 421, 423, 30 A. 622 (1894). An analogous example may be found in Becker v. Minber Corp., 177 Md. 583, 10 A.2d 707 (1940). There, Becker, who bought a leasehold from a purchaser at a foreclosure sale, refused to perform his contract because the assignee of the mortgagee who had conducted the foreclosure proceeding filed the original mortgage which had been short-assigned to him but failed to file certified copies of recorded assignments of the mortgage. This Court held that since the equity court had jurisdiction in the matter, the failure to file the recorded assignment, although contrary to the letter of the rule of court, was a mere dispensable formality and that the purchaser at the foreclosure sale acquired a good and merchantable title and specific performance should have been decreed.