Chap. 81.—An ACT to amend and re-enact Sections 5428 and 5429 of the Code
of Virginia, as amended, relating, respectively, to reports of commissioners, their
examunation, correction, confirmation and its effect, recordation, return of vouch-
ers, etc. [S 66]

Approved February 29, 1944

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. That sections fifty-four hundred twenty-eight and fifty-four hun-
dred twenty-nine of the Code of Virginia, as amended, be amended and
re-enacted, as follows:

Section 5428. Court to Examine Reports and Exceptions Thereto
and Correct any Errors; When Confirmed to be Recorded; Vouchers, et
cetera, to be Returned to Parties—(a) The court, or judge in vacation,
after one month from the time the report has been filed in its office, shall
examine such exceptions as have been filed. It shall correct any errors
which appear on the exceptions and to this end may commit the report
to the same or another commissioner, as often as it sees cause; or it may
cause a jury to be empaneled to inquire into any matter which, in its
opinion, should be ascertained in that way; or it may confirm the report
in whole or in a qualified manner, and shall certify in the order that it
has made a personal examination of the exceptions.

If no exceptions have been filed, the report shall stand confirmed on
the day next following the expiration of the period of one month after
the day on which the report was filed in the clerk’s office.

The clerk shall record every report so confirmed, whether by order
of the court or judge upon exceptions filed or by the lapse of the time
aforesaid without exceptions filed, and at the foot of it, the order of con-
firmation or the clerk’s certificate that no exceptions were filed, as the case
may be, in what is known as the will books or the book in which is re-
corded the fiduciary accounts in his office and index it according to pro-
visions of section thirty-three hundred ninety-four.

(b) The court may, however, by an order entered of record, direct
that such accounts be returned to it upon uniform sheets of paper, of
the grade prescribed by section three thousand three hundred ninety-
nine, in such dimensions and size as the court prescribes, suitable and
ready for binding, and in lieu of copying the reports in blank books may
direct the clerk to file and preserve the original accounts so returned, with
the order of confirmation or the clerk’s certificate, as the case may be, at
the foot, in a temporary holder, and from time to time direct same to be
substantially bound under the supervision of the clerk into permanent
books, each properly titled “fiduciary account book’, serially numbered
and properly indexed ; for which service the clerk of any court adopting
this method of recordation shall receive a fee of one dollar for each ac-
count.

(c) All vouchers or other evidence filed with the commissioner, the
court or the clerk at the time of confirmation of an account, and not re-
quired as evidence of any further matter of inquiry pending before the
court or the commissioner, shall upon request be returned by the com-
missioner or by the clerk of the court to the person who filed the same.

Section 5429. Effect of confirmation.—The report, to the extent to
which it may be so confirmed by an order of the court or judge upon
exceptions filed, or in whole when confirmed by lapse of time without
exceptions, as provided in the preceding section, shall be taken to be cor-
rect, except so far as it may, in a suit, in proper time, be surcharged or
falsified ; but no person who was a party to exceptions filed to the report
shall bring a suit to surcharge or falsify the report, and in such case the
action of the court on the report shall be final as to such party, but may
be appealed from as in other suits in equity.