The Attorney General of the State of Georgia, acting as parens patriae, filed a motion in the Probate Court of Brooks County to set aside an order of the probate court granting letters of dismission to the executor of an estate. The Attorney General also applied for an order requiring the executor to appear and submit to a settlement of accounts. The probate court granted the motion and application. On appeal by the executor, the Superior Court of Brooks County granted the Attorney General’s motion for summary judgment. The executor appeals to this court, challenging the standing of the Attorney General to institute this proceeding and the jurisdiction of the probate court over it. Resolving these issues adversely to the executor, we affirm. Robert Warde Chambers died in September 1989, without lineal descendants but in possession of an estate consisting of cash, real estate, and stock valued at approximately $631,606.59. Chambers had named his friend John R. Horton as executor of his will. In Items Three and Four of his will, Chambers made specific bequests of cash in the cumulative amount of $120,000 to a number of individuals and charitable and non-profit organizations, including a total of $20,000 to Horton and his family.
In Item Five of his will, Chambers bequeathed the rest, residue, and remainder of his estate “for charitable purposes to an organization or organizations,” as described in various sections of the Internal Revenue Code, which organization or organizations shall be selected by my Executor in his discretion, giving due consideration to my suggestions herein made, each of which charities selected by him shall be an organization or organizations described as aforesaid. I suggest to my Executor that he give every consideration to scholarships for young people at a college or colleges, vocational school or schools, or other educational institutions, to scholarship for ministerial students at a seminary or seminaries of the United States Methodist Church, the mission or missions work of the United Methodist Church, and the organizations or the work of the organizations named in Item Four of this Will aforesaid. Chambers directed the executor to make said selections in writing, give notice thereof to the organization or organizations selected, and file a copy of such selection in the probate court within six months after probate of the will and qualification of the executor.
