Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/120

104 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. current with courts of common law) over the claims of creditors of deceased persons, and exclusive jurisdiction over the claims of legatees and next of kin, had jurisdiction to administer fully and completely the personal estate of any deceased person, when properly applied to for that purpose, — a jurisdiction which no one court had ever before possessed; and the best justification of the Court of Chancery in extending its jurisdiction to bills by legatees and next of kin will be found in the need there was that some one court should have jurisdiction to administer the estates of deceased persons in respect as well to the claims of creditors as to the claims of legatees and next of kin. The acquisition of the necessary jurisdiction was, however, only the beginning of the task which equity had before it. The diffi- culty which it next encountered lay in the fact that it had no suit- able machinery for administering the estates of deceased persons. The only (or rather the best) machinery that it had for the pur- pose was that furnished by an ordinary suit; but that was neither adequate nor suitable. The only thing at all analogous which equity had been called upon to do was to administer the estate of a bankrupt debtor; but that was done, not by a suit, but by a proceeding specially provided for the purpose by statute. If it be asked why it was not sufficient for any creditor, legatee, or next of kin, whose claim was not satisfied, to bring a suit against the executor to enforce such claim, it may be answered, first, that it did not lie in the mouth of equity, in view of its recent extension of its jurisdiction, to say that nothing further was necessary, as a creditor, legatee, or next of kin could always sue the executor, the former at common law, the two latter in the ecclesiastical courts ; secondly, that no one suit by a creditor, legatee, or next of kin, against the executor, to enforce his individual claim, would enable equity to administer the estate, nor would any number of separate suits of that kind. On the contrary, such a mode of proceeding would have assumed that every estate of a deceased person was to be administered out of court, a court being applied to only when some individual claimant had some complaint to make against the executor. Thirdly, if an estate is to be administered by a court, it must be administered by some one suit or proceeding. The administra- tion of an estate consists in dividing it among the several persons who have interests in it or claims upon it, according to their