A Family Estate, a Half Interest, and a Fraud Charge
A lawsuit in superior court claims Joanna M. Russell misrepresented her share of the Jane Russell estate when the Cherry and Fourth property was sold.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Charges of conspiracy and fraud in the settlement of the estate of Jane Russell are made against Joanna M. Russell in a complaint filed in superior court yesterday by Emma Crow and others. Jane Russell died intestate in Seattle, leaving several heirs. Letters of administration were issued in June 1881 to an administrator who took possession of the estate’s house and lot at Cherry and Fourth, then valued at $2,500. After the original administrator died, Richard Hart qualified in March 1892 as administrator de bonis non.
The estate property increased in value to $5,070. In March, under court order, lot 2 at Fourth and Cherry was sold to Joanna M. Russell for $5,000. On October 11, Joanna M. Russell asked the court for an order of distribution, representing that she owned a half interest in the property she had purchased and was entitled to retain $2,500 of the purchase price. The complaint alleges that she and the administrators de bonis non knew these representations were false and made them to deceive the court. The half interest, it says, belonged to the estate of Robert Russell, whose debts will consume the property. The petitioners ask that the judgment be vacated.
“These representations, it is said, were at the time known by her and the administrators de bonis non to be false and untrue.”
Estate fights over Seattle property are as old as the property itself. The Cherry and Fourth corner was already valuable in 1895, and the accusation turns on who really owned a half-interest in a dead woman’s house. The case is a reminder that “family property” has always been a legal fiction when money and heirs collide.
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