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speak truly as to the past official acts of the court. Gen. Stat. 1894, sec. 4730.

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Lastly, it is urged by the relator that the administrator still has certain stocks in its possession belonging to the estate, and that it may also have after-discovered personal property of the intestate which it has not disclosed to any one. There is no basis for this assumption in the admitted facts, except that the trust company holds certain stocks as collateral to secure its individual debt against the intestate. But, were it otherwise, the fact still remains that all such stocks and after-discovered property, if any, passed by the decree to the heirs and distributees, for it assigns to them, not only the property therein specifically described, but also all other estate of the deceased in the State of Minnesota. It follows that the probate court rightly declined to issue the citation."

Some criticism is made, in the brief of the defendant in error, of the decision of the Supreme Court of Minnesota in this case; that the issue was feigned and an imposition upon the Supreme Court, and that the purpose of the decision was to forestall the decision of this court.

If, indeed, the judgment of the Supreme Court in that case were relied on as adjudging a case which had already passed into judgment in the Circuit Court of the United States we might readily agree, as urged by the defendant in error, that the decision of the Supreme Court of Minnesota "should receive little, if any, weight, by this court in the consideration of this case." But that decision is cited and relied on by the plaintiff in error, not as an adjudication of the facts in controversy here, but as an interpretation of the statutes of the State. Cases may be found where a decision made by a state Supreme Court, even in exposition of state statutes, after the institution of litigation in a Federal court, wherein this court has refused to follow such a decision, if in it the state court has departed from its previous decisions, which were in force and relied upon by the Federal suitor. Burgess v. Seligman, 107 U S. 20, 33; Carroll County v. Smith, 111 U. S. 556.

Here, however, the Supreme Court of Minnesota, in its last opinion, did not depart from or modify its previous decisions

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on the subject. On the contrary, it based its reasoning and conclusions upon its frequent previous decisions.

Nor are we permitted on the record in that case to impute to the parties therein an attempt to mislead the court or to improperly invoke its jurisdiction. The case seems to have gone before the probate court, the District Court and the Supreme Court, in the usual course of procedure, and the decision finally rendered by the Supreme Court must be received by us as a valid exposition of the law.

The conclusion to which we are brought, by an examination of the statutes of the State of Minnesota and of the decisions of the courts of that State in construing and applying them, is, that had a suit against an administrator of an estate been brought in the courts of that State, after the expiration of the period limited by the order of the probate court, in which creditors may present claims against the deceased for examination and allowance, and after an allowance of the administrator's final account, and a final decree of distribution, such suit could not have been maintained.

We are now to consider whether such a suit can be successfully maintained in a Federal court by a non-resident owner of a claim against the estate of a decedent.

Some general principles have become so well settled as to require only to be stated. One of these is that a foreign creditor may establish his debt in the courts of the United States against the personal representative of a decedent, notwithstanding the fact that the laws of the State relative to the administration and settlement of decedents' estates do in terms limit the right to establish such demands to a proceeding in the probate courts of the State. Union Bank of Tennessee v. Jolly's Adm'rs, 18 How. 503; Lawrence v. Nelson, 143 U. S. 215; Byers v. McAuley, 149 U. S. 608.

Another principle, equally well settled, is that the courts of the United States, in enforcing claims against executors and administrators of a decedent's estate, are administering the laws of the State of the domicile, and are bound by the same rules that govern the local tribunals. Aspden v. Nixon, 4 How. 467,

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"The Circuit Courts of the United States, with full equity powers, have jurisdiction over executors and administrators, where the parties are citizens of different States, and will enforce the same rules in the adjustment of claims against them that the local courts administer in favor of their own citizens." Walker v. Walker's Ex'r, 9 Wall. 743, 754.

In Yonley v. Lavender, 21 Wall. 276, it was decided that while a non-resident creditor may get a judgment in a Federal court against a resident administrator, and come in on the estate according to the law of the State for such payment as that law, marshalling the rights of creditors, awards to creditors of his class, yet he cannot, because he has obtained a judgment in a Federal court, issue execution and take precedence of other creditors who have no right to sue in the Federal courts, and if he do issue execution and sell lands, the sale is void.

The reasoning of this case is worthy of quotation:

"The several States of the Union necessarily have full control over the estates of deceased persons within their respective limits, and we see no ground on which the validity of the sale in question can be sustained. To sustain it would be in effect to nullify the administration laws of the State by giving to creditors out of the State greater privileges in the distribution of estates than creditors in the State enjoy. It is easy to see, if the non-resident creditor, by suing in the Federal courts of Arkansas, acquires a right to subject the assets of the estate to seizure and sale for the satisfaction of his debt, which he could not do by suing in the state court, that the whole estate, in case there were foreign creditors, might be swept away. Such a result would place the judgments of the Federal court on a higher grade than the judgments of the state court, necessarily produce conflict, and render the State powerless in a matter over which she has confessedly full control. Besides this it would give to the contract of a foreign creditor made in Arkansas a wider scope than a similar contract made in the same State by the same debtor with a home creditor. The home creditor would have to await the due course of administration for the payment of his debt, while the foreign creditor could, as soon as he got his judgment, seize and sell the estate of his

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debtor to satisfy it, and this, too, when the laws of the State in force when both contracts were made provided another mode for the compulsory payment of the debt. Such a difference is manifestly unjust and cannot be supported.

The ad

ministration laws of Arkansas are not merely rules of practice for the courts, but laws limiting the rights of parties, and will be observed by the Federal courts in the enforcement of individual rights. It is possible, though not probable, that state legislation on the subject of the estates of decedents might be purposely framed so as to discriminate injuriously against the creditor living outside of the State; but if this should unfortunately ever happen the courts of the United States would find a way, in a proper case, to arrest the discrimination, and to enforce equality of privileges among all classes of claimants, even if the estate were seized by operation of law and entrusted to a particular jurisdiction."

In Morgan v. Hamlet, 113 U. S. 449, it was held that the statute of Arkansas, that "all demands not exhibited to the executor or administrator, as required by this act, before the end of two years from the granting of letters, shall be forever barred," begins, on the granting of letters of administration, to run against persons under age out of the State.

The doctrine of the case of Yonley v. Lavender, 21 Wall. 276, was approved in Byers v. McAuley, 149 U. S. 608, 615, wherein it was held that the administration laws of a State are not merely rules of practice for the courts, but laws limiting the rights of parties, to be observed by the Federal courts in the enforcement of individual rights.

In Pulliam v. Pulliam, 10 Fed. Rep. 53, 78, the distinction between ordinary statutes of limitation and statutes of administration of the estates of decedents limiting the time within which creditors must prove their claims, is pointed out in the respect that the latter are rules of property as well as statutes of limitation, and it was said by Hammond, J., after citing Union Bank v. Jolly's Adm'rs, 18 How. 503, 504; Payne v. Hook, 7 Wall. 425, 430, and other cases:

"These cases, like many others, are only intended to protect the judicial power of the United States from encroachment by

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preserving to it the remedies and forms of proceeding which are granted with it, and not at all to set it above the legislative control of the States in matters pertaining to their jurisdiction. The cases cited from the Supreme Court do not, in my judgment, establish or in the least authorize the doctrine that state statutes, prescribing the time within which the creditor of a decedent must present or sue upon his claim in order to entitle him to share in the assets, and having the effect these do, are not binding on this court."

In Dodd v. Ghiselin, 27 Fed. Rep. 405, involving the administration of a decedent's estate, it was contended that non-resident minors had a right to have the laws of the State of Missouri regulating the matter disregarded in the Federal court, but it was held otherwise, per Brewer, J.: That the law of the State providing for the settlement of a deceased person's estate is binding upon the Federal as well as upon the

state courts.

In Miner v. Aylesworth, 18 Fed. Rep. 199, it was held by the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Rhode Island, as against non-resident complainants, that, under the Rhode Island statute, no suit can be commenced against an administrator, as such, after three years from the time he gave public notice of his appointment. Bauserman v. Blunt, 147 U. S. 647, 652.

Applying these principles to the present case, it would seem clear that the defendant in error, as a citizen of the State of New York, and having a legal claim against the estate of S. W. Matteson, deceased, had a right to elect to proceed to establish it by bringing a suit in the Circuit Court of the United States; and if he had brought his action against an existing administrator, the administration of the estate not having been closed under the statutory proceedings, and obtained a judgment, undoubtedly such a judgment, when presented to the probate court within the time fixed by its order, must have been received by that court as a claim against the unadministered estate.

But can it be said that, if the foreign creditor delays proceedings in the Federal court until after the time fixed by the