Court Opinion

ID: 9747137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:58:32.402355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:20.392572
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice
(dissenting).
The decree of the court below following remand on the prior appeal to this Court was in the form of a final decree, not a decree nisi. While it is true that, absent a contrary local rule, the equity rules apply in orphans’ court division cases so as to make mandatory the filing of exceptions, the exceptions contemplated by Pa.R.C.P. 1518 are to decrees nisi. Section 7, Rule 1 of our Orphans’ Court Rules provides that exceptions “shall be filed at such place and time, shall be in such form, copies thereof served and disposition made thereof as local rules shall prescribe.” We have been furnished with no local rules of the Orphans’ Court Division of the Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County making provision for exceptions. Cf. Sniderman Estate, 450 Pa. 133, 299 A.2d 207 (1973). It is therefore unfair to require that appellant shall have filed exceptions to the apparently final decree below in order to preserve for appellate review its claim for reimbursement. Accordingly, I would remand the case for the filing of exceptions to the decree appealed from and for further proceedings in the court below.
EAGEN, J., joins in this opinion.