In Re Conservatorship of Estate of Hume

I. BACKGROUND

William Snow Hume has appealed from the order of the trial court approving a final accounting by the county public guardian as conservator for Hume’s now-deceased father. His main complaint, and one which we must conclude is well-taken, is that the accounting failed to include his father’s interests in certain real property in Tennessee.

There is no question that the conservatee actually did own real property in Tennessee—the public guardian’s accounting in fact listed the conservatee’s one-half community interest in crop rents received from the property. Those rents didn’t just fall off a pear tree. They were derived from a substantial asset owned by the conservatee.

Hume’s own interest, as he voiced toward the end of the trial court hearing on the accounting, is that he is afraid that certain siblings are in possession of an “unrecorded trust instrument” on the property which—though he didn’t quite come out and say it—might in some unspecified way be used to deprive him of his share in the property that he might otherwise receive by way of inheritance. Given that a conservator’s accounting can be incorporated by reference in “traditional” (after-death)…