CRIPPEN & LAWRENCE INVESTMENT CO., INC. v. a TRACT OF LAND BEING KNOWN AS 444 LEMON STREET

When Lillie Mae Bedford died in 1997, she left her Marietta house to her daughter, Jennifer Hood, but the estate never signed a deed transferring legal title. Hood lived there and paid taxes for years, but the taxes eventually went unpaid, and Crippen & Lawrence Investment Company bought the property at a 2013 tax sale. Crippen later tried to cut off Hood's right to reclaim the property, but the Bedford estate stepped in and argued it should have gotten formal notice of that foreclosure because it still held title. Crippen argued the estate no longer owned the property because its executor had, through years of inaction and letting Hood manage the house, effectively agreed to transfer it to her. A trial court and the Court of Appeals of Georgia said Crippen, as an outsider to the estate, had no legal right to make that argument. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed, holding that Crippen could raise the issue in its own lawsuit, and sent the case back for further proceedings.

The court held that although only a devisee or legatee may ask a probate court to compel an executor to give assent going forward, anyone with a stake in a proper proceeding, including a stranger to the estate, may prove that an executor already gave assent, whether express or implied by conduct, to a devise.

The ruling clarifies that tax sale purchasers and other outsiders to an estate can argue in court that an executor already assented to a devise, affecting how Georgia title disputes involving inherited but never formally deeded property get resolved statewide.

Judgment reversed in part, and case remanded with direction

1. Under Georgia's old Probate Code (former OCGA § 53-2-108), when someone dies leaving real property by will, legal title initially passes to the estate's executor and stays there until the executor 'assents' to the devise, meaning formally agrees to let it pass to the person named in the will.
2. That assent can take several distinct forms: an express written deed of conveyance, assent implied from the executor's conduct (such as inaction while the heir takes possession), assent conclusively implied when the executor is discharged, or assent compelled by a probate court order.
3. The Court of Appeals of Georgia ruled that Crippen, as an outsider with no formal relationship to the estate, could not argue the executor had implicitly assented to the devise, relying on a provision that lets only a devisee or legatee ask a probate court to force an executor to give assent.
4. The Supreme Court of Georgia found this reasoning mistaken because that provision only governs who can ask a court to compel assent going forward; it says nothing about who may prove, in a separate lawsuit like a quiet title case, that assent was already given voluntarily in the past.
5. Because Crippen was not trying to force the executor's hand but instead trying to prove that assent had already occurred years earlier through the executor's conduct, the court concluded Crippen had standing to make that argument in its quiet title case.
6. The same outcome holds under Georgia's newer Probate Code (OCGA § 53-8-15), which similarly limits only the right to compel future assent to heirs and beneficiaries, without restricting who can later prove assent already happened.

• tax sale foreclosure
• quiet title
• executor assent
• testamentary devise
• standing to sue