Definition
A Latin plea meaning "he has fully administered." In estate litigation, plene administravit is the formal defense raised by an executor or administrator when sued by a creditor of the decedent, asserting that all assets of the estate have been fully administered — received, applied to proper debts and charges, and exhausted — leaving nothing from which the plaintiff's claim can be satisfied.
The plea is not a denial of the underlying debt. The executor or administrator concedes that the debt may be valid but asserts that no assets remain in hand to pay it. If the plea is sustained, judgment typically enters for the plaintiff in a qualified form: the creditor prevails on the debt but can only execute against assets that come into the executor's hands in the future (assets that may later be discovered or received). This judgment is sometimes called a judgment de bonis testatoris si et quando — against the goods of the testator if and when they come to hand.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Plene administravit: The complete defense. The executor asserts that all assets have been fully administered and nothing remains. No present liability for execution follows.
Plene administravit praeter: The partial defense. The executor admits to having some assets remaining but asserts they are insufficient to satisfy the full claim. The defendant acknowledges partial assets, admits liability to that extent, and pleads full administration only as to the excess. Judgment for the full debt enters, but execution is limited to the admitted assets currently in hand, with a qualified judgment as to the remainder.
Plene administraverunt: The plural form, used when multiple executors or administrators jointly raise the same defense.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older equity and common law pleading contexts. Researchers encountering it in historical records — particularly English chancery pleadings, colonial American probate records, or nineteenth-century American practice manuals — should understand that the plea was a formal procedural mechanism with precise legal consequences, not merely a factual assertion that the money was gone.
The distinction between plene administravit and plene administravit praeter is practically significant in archival research: the form of the plea determines the form of the judgment entered, and misreading a partial-administration plea as a full-administration plea will produce a mistaken picture of how an estate dispute resolved.
Researchers working in nineteenth-century American sources should note that the plea was subject to challenge. A creditor who believed the executor had wasted, concealed, or misapplied assets could traverse the plea — putting the executor's assertion of full administration at issue and forcing proof. A finding against the executor on that traverse could expose the executor personally to liability (de bonis propriis — from the executor's own goods), making the plea's outcome consequential beyond mere procedural form.
By the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most American jurisdictions folded the substance of this defense into statutory probate procedures, and the Latin plea form disappeared from practice. It survives in historical legal records and continues to appear in treatises on estate administration and the law of executors.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the clearest structural account: the plea asserts that the executor "has fully administered all the assets that have come to his hands," with the consequence that no assets remain available for the plaintiff's claim. Burrill also notes the plural form plene administraverunt for co-executors, citing English authority.
Rapalje and Lawrence add the most practically useful detail for researchers: they distinguish the complete plea from plene administravit praeter, explaining that the latter applies when some assets remain but are insufficient to satisfy the full debt. Their cross-reference to the judgment consequences is important — the plea's significance is inseparable from the form of relief that follows.
Black's Law Dictionary entry in the available source material is corrupted or incomplete, offering no substantive content usable for this entry.
Historical sources generally agree on the core elements of the plea but vary in how fully they explain the distinction between full and partial administration defenses. Burrill and Rapalje both point toward English practice treatises (Tidd's Practice, Williams on Executors, Archbold's Practice) as primary authorities, reflecting that this plea was more systematically developed in English common law courts than in American practice, where it never fully standardized before statutory procedures overtook it.
Jurisdictional Note
The plea as a formal procedural device was primarily a feature of English common law and equity practice. American adoption was uneven: some states recognized and applied the plea in nineteenth-century probate litigation, while others folded the defense into general pleading rules or statutory probate codes without preserving the Latin form. Researchers should not assume uniform American practice even within the period when the plea was nominally in use.