Estate of Bonaccorsi

Kenneth R. Farrow, Gardena, for Objectors and Respondents.

In this probate matter, the discharged administrator of an estate appeals from orders surcharging him $134,200 for breach of fiduciary duty, denying statutory and extraordinary fees, and imposing an additional $50,000 in attorney fees for bad faith.

We disallow the surcharge for the depreciated value of the decedent's residence ($50,000) and the fee award, but affirm the remaining surcharges. Substantial evidence supports the court's determination that the administrator unreasonably voted the beneficiaries' stock to run a "corporation" (whose principal asset consisted of the decedents' private residence) outside probate. There is ample support in the record that the administrator "proceeded thereafter to bleed the corporation of its liquid assets" by paying himself excessive fees and reimbursements. He was properly found to have operated at his own peril in so acting without court supervision or approval.

For some 23 years, Anthony Bonaccorsi, the decedent, lived together with his halfsister Lydia Fabiano in a three-bedroom house on Galaxy Drive on a quarter-acre site in the Back Bay area overlooking the…