In the estate of Mieth; Baker v Cohn-Vossen

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1986
• Date: 01 January 1986
• Court: High Court

(H.C.)

In the estate of Mieth; Baker

and

Cohn-Vossen

Insufficiency of evidence - Refusal of examiner's certificate - Application for order presuming the deaths of certain persons and giving administrator leave to distribute assets - Benjamin order.

The late Dora Mieth, an elderly spinster, died having survived the persons she had appointed in her will to be her executors and beneficiaries. A native of Dresden, the child of deaf mutes, the deceased appeared to have lost all her immediate family and many of her wider kin in concentration camps and otherwise during the war. The plaintiff, the attorney of a distant relative, obtained a grant of administration with will annexed. The defendant, one of the next-of-kin, was appointed to represent the interests of all. A special summons taken out by the administrator sought an enquiry into the next-of-kin under the auspices of the court. The assistant-examiner who assembled the available evidence in a report to the court dated 12 November, 1979, concluded that because of the lack of proper evidence and of the large number of assumptions involved an examiner's certificate could not be issued. There the...