Opinion ID: 1805283
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Gaynell's Personal Claims

Text: As explained more fully below, at the time the causes of action at issue in this cross-appeal accrued, the Lord Abbett IRA and the Scudder account belonged either to Rowena or to Rowena's estate. Gaynell contends on appeal, however, that, as a beneficiary of Rowena's will, she had sufficient interest in the funds to bring her claims individually. This Court has stated that the general rule is that personal assets are recoverable only by the personal representative. Cook v. Parker, 248 Ala. 393, 395, 27 So.2d 779, 781 (1946). That is, as a general rule, [n]either legatees nor distributees can maintain suits concerning [personal assets], though when recovered the personal representative holds them in trust for their ultimate benefit. Id. See also Ala.Code 1975, §§ 43-2-830, 43-2-837 (authorizing a personal representatives to bring a civil action to recover possession of property or to determine the title thereto), and 43-2-839. Gaynell does not argue that she falls within any exception to the general rule. Compare Cook v. Parker, 248 Ala. at 395, 27 So.2d at 781 (explaining an exception applicable [w]hen an estate is left entirely free from debt, and the distributees do not invoke the action of the probate court to separate their several interests, but ask an equity court to give them their respective shares, without the expense and delay of an administration); and Gunter v. Gunter, 911 So.2d 704 (Ala.Civ.App.2005) (allowing intervention, in a lawsuit, of a legatee under a will, where the executor had his own personal interest in the property at issue and had not moved to intervene in the lawsuit in his capacity as executor, and the court, citing Rule 24(a), Ala. R. Civ. P., concluded that the beneficiary's interest as to the property [was] not `adequately represented by existing parties'). The only element of damage Gaynell alleged in her complaint that even arguably could be construed as arising from a wrong done to her personally, rather than to Rowena or the estate, relates to a delay that occurred in the titling of the Lord Abbett IRA in her name individually after Lord Abbett had retitled the IRA in the name of Rowena's estate. This claim, alleging as it does wrongdoing in Lord Abbett's delay, has not been shown to implicate the Cadaret defendants and, as a result, provides no basis to defeat a summary judgment against Gaynell on the claims she alleged in her personal capacity against the Cadaret defendants.