DECREES

Many judgments, enforcement of which has given rise to litigation,
embrace decrees of courts of probate respecting the distribution of
estates. In order that a court have jurisdiction of such a proceeding,
the decedent must have been domiciled in the State, and the question
whether he was so domiciled at the time of his death may be raised in
the court of a sister State.[77] Thus, when a court of State A, in
probating a will and issuing letters, in a proceeding to which all
distributees were parties, expressly found that the testator's domicile
at the time of death was in State A, such adjudication of domicile was
held not to bind one subsequently appointed as domiciliary administrator
c.t.a. in State B, in which he was liable to be called upon to deal with
claims of local creditors and that of the State itself for taxes, he
having not been a party to the proceeding in State A. In this situation,
it was held, a court of State C, when disposing of local assets claimed
by both personal representatives, was free to determine domicile in
accordance with the law of State C.[78] Similarly, there is no such
relation of privity between an executor appointed in one State and an
administrator c.t.a. appointed in another State as will make a decree
against the latter binding upon the former.[79] On the other hand,
judicial proceedings in one State, under which inheritance taxes have
been paid and the administration upon the estate has been closed, are
denied full faith and credit by the action of a probate court in another
State in assuming jurisdiction and assessing inheritance taxes against
the beneficiaries of the estate, when under the law of the former State
the order of the probate court barring all creditors who had failed to
bring in their demand from any further claim against the executors was
binding upon all.[80]

What is more important, however, is that the _res_ in such a proceeding,
that is, the estate, in order to entitle the judgment to recognition
under article IV, section 1, must have been located in the State or
legally attached to the person of the decedent. Such a judgment is
accordingly valid, generally speaking, to distribute the intangible
property of the decedent, though the evidences thereof were actually
located elsewhere.[81] This is not so, on the other hand, as to
tangibles and realty. In order that the judgment of a probate court
distributing these be entitled to recognition under the Const