Definition
A plea available to an executor or administrator in response to a creditor's claim against an estate, asserting that all assets of the decedent's estate have been completely and lawfully distributed or applied, leaving nothing from which a new or further claim could be satisfied. The plea is a defense, not a denial of the underlying debt — the executor or administrator is effectively saying: the debt may be valid, but there is nothing left in the estate to pay it.
The phrase is the English rendering of the Latin pleading term plene administravit, which carries identical legal meaning and appears throughout older probate and equity records.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry. "Fully administered" appears in general English as a straightforward compound — something completely managed, dispensed, or carried out.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Administer" carried the sense of managing or dispensing something held in trust or office; "fully" simply intensified completeness.
The gap matters here: in ordinary English, "fully administered" suggests competent and thorough management — a positive description. In law, the plea is a shield against liability, and its use does not imply praise. An estate can be "fully administered" in the legal sense even where the executor made questionable distribution decisions, provided those decisions were lawful. Researchers encountering the phrase in historical pleadings should not read it as a factual endorsement of the executor's conduct.
Common Confusion
FULLY ADMINISTERED vs. PLENE ADMINISTRAVIT: These are the same plea; one is the English form, the other the Latin. Older equity and probate records — particularly pre-19th century — will use plene administravit almost exclusively. Post-codification American records shift to the English form. A researcher searching only one term in historical sources will miss records using the other.
FULLY ADMINISTERED vs. ASSETS EXHAUSTED: "Assets exhausted" is a colloquial description of the estate's condition. "Fully administered" is a formal legal plea with procedural consequences. A finding that assets are exhausted may support the plea, but the plea itself must be properly raised and, if challenged, proven.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap is the Latin-English divide. Historical probate and chancery records through the nineteenth century almost uniformly use plene administravit. American court records begin migrating to the English form in the mid-to-late 1800s, but the shift is uneven by jurisdiction and court type. A corpus search on "fully administered" alone will undercount historical instances significantly; any serious research into executor liability or estate creditor claims must run parallel searches on plene administravit.
The plea also has a companion form — plene administravit praeter — meaning the executor has fully administered except for a specified residue. This qualified version appears in records where partial assets remain. Researchers reading historical pleadings should distinguish the two, as they have different procedural effects: the full plea bars the claim entirely; the qualified plea limits recovery to the identified remainder.
In practice, the plea shifts the burden. Once raised, the creditor must typically show that assets exist or existed that were not properly administered. This evidentiary dynamic means that disputes about the plea generate secondary records — accounting submissions, inventories, appraisals — that are valuable to researchers reconstructing estate administration history.
The plea is most commonly encountered in probate court records, chancery proceedings, and appellate opinions reviewing executor conduct. It is less visible in modern records because procedural codes have displaced much of the common law pleading framework, but the underlying defense concept survives in probate statutes across jurisdictions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the core definition accurately and concisely, correctly identifying the plea as a defense by an executor or administrator asserting complete and lawful disposal of estate assets. The entry appropriately supplies the Latin equivalent and cites Ryan v. Boogher as an illustrative case.
What Black's 2nd does not address: the companion plea of plene administravit praeter, the procedural burden-shifting consequences of raising the plea, or the evidentiary record it generates. For a practicing researcher, these gaps are meaningful. The definition is a starting point, not a complete picture of how the plea functioned in litigation.
No other historical dictionary sources were available for this entry. The absence of coverage in sources like Bouvier or Burrill reflects the narrow, pleading-specific nature of the term — it was a technical formula more than a conceptual category, and encyclopedic legal works tended to address it under executor liability or pleading rather than as a standalone entry.
Jurisdictional Note
The plea originates in English common law and equity practice and was received broadly across American jurisdictions. Its continued vitality varies: states with modern probate codes may have replaced formal pleading of this defense with statutory procedures, while others preserve the common law framework. Researchers working across jurisdictions should check whether the relevant state treats executor defenses as governed by common law pleading rules or by the applicable probate or civil procedure code.