A claim against the estate of a deceased person must rest on some obligation which he voluntarily assumed, or which was cast upon him by law. In stating a claim for $6,000 against the estate of a deceased ward, the claimant alleged that the conservator represented that his ward had set aside $6,000 which would be paid, after her death, for extra services, which the claimant thereupon and in consideration thereof agreed with the conservator to render, and did in fact render, the ward until her death; that such representation was untrue and that the services rendered were necessaries and reasonably worth the sum demanded. Held: — 1. That the estate was not liable for the false representation of the conservator. 2. That inasmuch as the services were expressly alleged to have been rendered under the special agreement to accept the $6,000 in payment, the claimant could not at the same time consistently ask to recover their reasonable value upon the theory of an implied contract. 3. That after the original statement of claim had been adjudged insufficient upon demurrer, the claimant was entitled, under General Statutes, § 1029, to file a substitute statement alleging such facts as would justify a recovery of the reasonable value of the services rendered; and that the question whether the proposed substitute did contain the necessary averments was one which ought not to be summarily decided by refusing to permit it to be filed. The case of Donahue's Appeal, 62 Conn. 370, distinguished. General Statutes, § 1049, provides that actions may be maintained against an "executor, administrator, guardian, or trustee," for claims growing out of moneys paid or services rendered for the estate in his hands and which should justly be paid from said estate. Held that if the statute applied to conservators at all, it could not be invoked in a proceeding to which the conservator was in no way a party.
BALDWIN, J.
The original statement of claim was of a twofold character. It was for necessaries furnished to an insane person, which were reasonably worth $6,084; it was also for breach of a special undertaking by the conservator that, upon the ward's death, $6,000 would be paid from her estate in compensation for these same necessaries. It is expressly alleged that they were in fact furnished under an agreement made in consideration of this promise of the conservator. Had the promise been made by the ward, while sane, instead of her conservator, it would have excluded any resort to an implied contract. A special agreement to accept $6,000 for services to last during a lifetime, and which therefore might terminate in a month or might run through half a century, is inconsistent with any right to ask payment for their actual value. Donahue's Appeal, 62 Conn. 370, 375. That the promisor was not the person to be immediately benefited makes no difference as respects this rule of law. If the claimant was entitled to compensation, it was an agreed sum, to be derived from a particular source.
A claim against the estate of a deceased person must rest on some obligation which he voluntarily assumed, or which was cast upon him by law. No suit could have been maintained against Mary E. Merwin during her lifetime for the value of the necessaries in question; for they were furnished under a special contract with another, and on the credit of a particular fund, to become available upon her decease. Mass. Gen. Hospital v. Fairbanks, 129 Mass. 78. No obligation was ever assumed by her or by her conservator to provide compensation for them out of her estate in his possession. If the claimant had any remedy, it was against the person on whose promise and representation she relied.
It is contended that the presentation of this claim to the commissioners on the ward's estate was justified by General Statutes, § 1049. If that statute applies to conservators, it certainly cannot be invoked in a proceeding to which a conservator is in no way a party.
It follows both that the demurrer to the original statement of claim was properly sustained, and that there was error in refusing leave to file the statement which it was proposed to substitute.
The latter is for the reasonable value of necessaries furnished to the ward, in the expectation of compensation out of her estate, and with the knowledge and assent of the conservator. If its averments can be read as importing that the conservator neglected to make any other provision for watching and nursing her, they are a sufficient foundation for the claim. Whether they can be thus read was not a matter to be summarily decided by denying an opportunity to present them in regular course to the consideration of the court. Freeman's Appeal, 71 Conn. 708.
The claimant had a statutory right to file her "substitute statement of claim," unless it was one "changing the ground of action." General Statutes, § 1029. She had attempted to combine two grounds of action in her original statement. In that which she proposed to substitute for it, she relied on one of these still, but put it forward in connection with certain additional circumstances. The case is unlike Donahue's Appeal, supra, in which a claim for breach of an executory agreement, made in consideration of a promise to perform services, was held not so amendable as to make it one for the reasonable value of services rendered. Here the actual performance of valuable services was explicitly alleged as a ground of recovery, both in the original and the amended statement, and reiterated in the bill of particulars. See Practice Book, p. 12, Rule II, § 3; Brewster v. Aldrich, 70 Conn. 51.