Short answer. If the claimant refuses a partial offer and then fails to win a more favorable judgment, the claimant cannot recover costs and must instead pay the administrator's costs from the time of the offer onward, discouraging creditors from rejecting a reasonable partial settlement.
What the law says
When the executor or administrator, in his answer, admits and offers to pay part of a claim, and the claimant refuses to accept the amount offered in satisfaction of his claim, if he fails to obtain a more favorable judgment, he cannot recover costs, but must pay to the executor or administrator costs from the time of the offer.
Rule 86, Section 14 — Costs. Read the full provision →
A penalty for refusing a good-enough offer
Where the administrator's answer admits and offers to pay part of a claim, the claimant faces a real consequence for pushing forward instead of accepting it: if the claimant refuses the offer and later fails to obtain a more favorable judgment than what was already offered, the claimant cannot recover costs at all. This consequence applies specifically when the offer appears in the administrator's answer itself, not in some informal, off-the-record proposal made outside the pleadings; a claimant weighing whether to accept should treat the formal offer in the answer as the benchmark the eventual judgment will be measured against, not any prior settlement talk that never made it into the case record.
The claimant may end up paying instead
The consequence goes beyond simply losing the right to recover costs. In that same scenario, the claimant must pay the executor or administrator's own costs, measured from the time the offer was made, so pursuing a claim past a reasonable partial offer carries a genuine financial risk rather than being a costless gamble. This financial exposure binds the claimant personally, not any co-heir or other creditor who took no part in refusing the offer; other creditors with separate, unrelated claims against the same estate are not affected by one claimant's decision to gamble on a better judgment and lose, since Section 14's cost-shifting runs only against the party who actually rejected the offer.
When the penalty does not apply
This penalty applies only if the claimant fails to win a more favorable judgment than what was offered; a claimant who holds out and then actually recovers more than the administrator's partial offer pays no penalty at all and remains entitled to costs in the ordinary way, since Section 14 only shifts the burden onto a claimant whose gamble to reject the offer did not pay off. The rule also says nothing about interest or damages beyond costs, so it does not by itself increase what the claimant ultimately owes beyond the costs of the proceeding.