HKB
PROBATE DECREES
Many judgments, enforcement of which has given rise to litigation, embrace decrees of courts of probate respecting the distribution of estates. In order that a court have jurisdiction of such a proceeding, the decedent must have been domiciled in the State, and the question whether he was so domiciled at the time of his death may be raised in the court of a sister State.[77] Thus, when a court of State A, in probating a will and issuing letters, in a proceeding to which all distributees were parties, expressly found that the testator's domicile at the time of death was in State A, such adjudication of domicile was held not to bind one subsequently appointed as domiciliary administrator c.t.a. in State B, in which he was liable to be called upon to deal with claims of local creditors and that of the State itself for taxes, he having not been a party to the proceeding in State A. In this situation, it was held, a court of State C, when disposing of local assets claimed by both personal representatives, was free to determine domicile in accordance with the law of State C.[78] Similarly, there is no such relation of privity between an executor appointed in one State and an administrator c.t.a. appointed in another State as will make a decree against the latter binding upon the former.[79] On the other hand, judicial proceedings in one State, under which inheritance taxes have been paid and the administration upon the estate has been closed, are denied full faith and credit by the action of a probate court in another State in assuming jurisdiction and assessing inheritance taxes against the beneficiaries of the estate, when under the law of the former State the order of the probate court barring all creditors who had failed to bring in their demand from any further claim against the executors was binding upon all.[80]
What is more important, however, is that the res in such a proceeding, that is, the estate, in order to entitle the judgment to recognition under article IV, section 1, must have been located in the State or legally attached to the person of the decedent. Such a judgment is accordingly valid, generally speaking, to distribute the intangible property of the decedent, though the evidences thereof were actually located elsewhere.[81] This is not so, on the other hand, as to tangibles and realty. In order that the judgment of a probate court distributing these be entitled to recognition under the Constitution, they must have been located in the State; as to tangibles and realty outside the State, the decree of the probate court is entirely at the mercy of the lex rei sitae.[82] So, the probate of a will in one State, while conclusive therein, does not displace legal provisions necessary to its validity as a will of real property in other States.[83]
ADOPTION DECREES
That a statute legitimizing children born out of wedlock does not entitle them by the aid of the full faith and credit clause to share in the property located in another State is not surprising, in view of the general principle--to which, however, there are exceptions (see pp. 675-682)--that statutes do not have extraterritorial operation.[84] For the same reason adoption proceedings in one State are not denied full faith and credit by the law of the sister State which excludes children adopted by proceedings in other States from the right to inherit land therein.[85]
GARNISHMENT DECREES