Short answer. Except where later sections provide otherwise, the administrator's account must charge them with the whole estate that came into their possession, valued per the inventory appraisal, plus all interest, profit, and income from the estate, and the actual sale proceeds of anything they sold.
What the law says
Except as otherwise expressly provided in the following sections, every executor or administrator is chargeable in his account with the whole of the estate of the deceased which has come into his possession, at the value of the appraisement contained in the inventory; with all the interest, profit, and income of such estate; and with the proceeds of so much of the estate as is sold by him, at the price at which it was sold.
Rule 85, Section 1 — Executor or administrator chargeable with all estate and income. Read the full provision →
The baseline accountability rule
This section sets the default rule against which every executor's or administrator's account is measured, and the following sections in the same rule then carve out specific exceptions and refinements to it. Unless one of those later provisions expressly says otherwise, the administrator is chargeable with everything described here, without exception or excuse, making Section 1 the starting point for evaluating whether any particular accounting is complete.
Three things the account must capture
The account must include the whole of the estate that came into the administrator's possession, valued at the appraisement figure fixed in the inventory, together with all the interest, profit, and income the estate generated, and the actual proceeds of whatever portion of the estate the administrator sold, valued at the price it actually fetched rather than an estimate. Omitting any of these three components leaves the accounting incomplete under the section's own terms.
Why the inventory value anchors the account
Tying the charge to the inventory's appraisement, rather than to whatever value the administrator might later claim, keeps the accounting objective and anchored to a figure the court and interested parties already had before them at an earlier stage of the proceeding, making later manipulation of the numbers harder to get away with. An administrator cannot quietly undervalue estate property in the account when that same property was already appraised and recorded in the inventory filed earlier in the proceeding.
How this section fits the broader accounting scheme
Section 1's baseline charge is only the starting point of a larger accounting framework, since the sections that follow it address related questions like the administrator's credits for expenses paid and losses properly incurred, and the specific procedure for settling and approving the account before the court. Reading Section 1 together with those companion provisions gives the full picture of what an estate accounting actually has to show.
Related provisions
- Rule 85, Section 1 — Executor or administrator chargeable with all estate and income
- Rule 85, Section 2 — Not to profit by increase or lose by decrease in value