The High Court has revoked Albina Hoey’s grant of administration of her late husband’s estate and ordered that administration be granted to Cleaver, Fulton and Rankin Trustees Limited. Mr Justice David Keane found that prolonged delay and failures to gather estate property and account to beneficiaries amounted to special circumstances requiring her replacement.
The case was brought by Deirdre Muckian and Mary McCann, two daughters of Michael Hoey and Albina Hoey. Michael Hoey died intestate in October 2003. His widow received letters of administration in May 2009 and remained the estate’s administratrix until the court’s order.
The evidence before the court was limited to affidavits from the applicants and the first respondent. The judgment records that the estate included farmland and commercial property in counties Monaghan and Louth, property in Northern Ireland, and money in bank accounts. The court said a draft distribution account was produced only in January 2016, more than 12 years after Michael Hoey’s death.
The applicants alleged excessive delay and said estate lands had been transferred without the sale consideration being collected into the estate. The first respondent acknowledged transferring farmland in Monaghan and Louth to the third respondent for €400,000 and commercial premises in Dundalk to the fourth respondent for the same amount. The judge said the consideration appeared not to have been gathered into the estate, and that the draft account raised questions about income, expenditure and interest. He also found that the first respondent had failed properly to account to beneficiaries for estate assets and liabilities.
The judgment referred to earlier Northern Ireland proceedings. In 2014, that court removed the first respondent as administratrix of the estate in that jurisdiction and appointed the same trustee firm. The High Court in this case considered the administration of the estate within the State; the order in this judgment revoked the grant made here and directed that administration be granted to the trustee firm.
The judge said delay and failure to collect and administer estate property according to law could each constitute special circumstances for replacing an administratrix. He found both applied in this case, individually and together. He did not decide the applicants’ separate complaint about a 2004 letter to the Department of Agriculture and Food, saying it was unnecessary given his other conclusions.