A Missouri appeals court has affirmed a probate division’s approval of a conservator’s final settlement over a sibling’s objection, holding that an adult child has no standing to press a breach of fiduciary duty claim inside the conservatorship after the protectee has died. The opinion is a short, practical map of who may object to what, and when.
Time-sensitive for families now winding up a conservatorship: When a protectee dies, the conservator’s authority terminates immediately except as needed to wind up the administration, and the statutory scheme contemplates a final settlement within ninety days. Objections that are saved for later are frequently objections that are lost.
On September 14, 2026, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, handed down its opinion in In the Matter of Kyong Spruill, Incapacitated and Disabled, No. SD39185, an appeal from the Circuit Court of Pulaski County. The panel affirmed the probate division’s judgment approving a conservator’s amended final settlement, approving her out-of-pocket expenses and extraordinary attorney fees, and granting her discharge upon full distribution of the remaining estate assets. Judge Jack A. L. Goodman wrote for the court; Judges Jeffrey W. Bates and Matthew P. Hamner concurred.
The facts are the kind that arrive in a Missouri probate division most weeks of the year. A daughter, J-Pia Spruill, served as guardian and conservator for her mother, Kyong Spruill. Under a court order, the mother’s personal property was sold at online public auctions run with a court-approved auction company. Both the daughter and her brother, Arthur Spruill, placed bids, and the daughter was the winning bidder on lots totaling roughly $10,000. After the proceeds reached the conservatorship estate, the mother died. The daughter filed a suggestion of death and asked to close the estate. The brother objected to the amended final settlement, and after an evidentiary hearing the probate division approved it anyway.
Three arguments, one point on appeal
This was the second appeal in the same family matter. The first, Matter of Spruill, 709 S.W.3d 438 (Mo. App. S.D. 2025), challenged the incapacity judgment and the order authorizing the sale; the court found those claims moot or unpreserved. Here the brother raised a single point with three parts: that the daughter’s purchase of estate property breached her fiduciary duty and created a conflict of interest, that she failed to disclose she had bought assets for less than fair market value, and that the underlying sale order was void.
The court took the third argument first and disposed of it on the law of the case. A previous holding precludes relitigation on a subsequent appeal, and the doctrine reaches not only what was decided but what could have been raised and was not. The panel cited Walton v. City of Berkeley, 223 S.W.3d 126 (Mo. banc 2007), for the point that the doctrine protects the parties’ expectations and promotes judicial economy. The brother had recast his challenge to the sale order as a due process argument presented through the final settlement rather than as a direct attack. The court called the distinction inconsequential. Once the mandate issued in the first appeal, the propriety of the sale order was settled.
Whose fiduciary duty, and whose claim
The second argument produced the part of the opinion most likely to matter to Missouri families. Section 475.130.1, RSMo, directs a conservator to protect, preserve and manage the estate under court supervision, to exercise the care, skill and prudence of an ordinarily prudent person managing the property of another, and to act in the interest of the protectee and avoid conflicts of interest. The Southern District confirmed that this duty is owed to the protectee. It is not owed to the protectee’s adult children.
Because the mother had died, the court held, any claim she might have had against her conservator for breach of that duty could no longer be raised inside the conservatorship proceeding. It would have to be brought by the decedent’s estate through the personal representative, citing Scott v. Flynn, 946 S.W.2d 248 (Mo. App. E.D. 1997). The brother had not argued that the conservator owed him any duty, and the court observed that he could not: holding that a conservator owes fiduciary duties to a protectee’s adult children could require the conservator to act in direct conflict with the statutory obligation to act in the best interest of the protectee alone. The argument failed because no duty ran to him and because he lacked standing to assert the claim on his mother’s behalf in that forum.
The practical translation.
If a family member believes a conservator mishandled the estate and the protectee has since died, the objection generally does not belong in the closing conservatorship file. It belongs to the decedent’s estate, asserted by the personal representative. That means someone has to open the estate and be appointed before the claim has a place to live. Our probate and contested estates pages describe how that appointment works.
What a final settlement is actually required to show
The brother’s remaining argument was that the settlement could not be a just and true accounting unless the conservator disclosed that she had participated in the auction. The court answered that Section 475.290 does not require that information in a final settlement, nor does it make such a disclosure a precondition to approval. The statute requires the conservator to make final settlement at a time fixed by the court, generally within ninety days after her authority terminates, to file an account, and to deliver a copy with written notice at least twenty days beforehand. Subsection 3 directs the court to examine the accounts, correct all errors, and finalize the settlement upon proof of notice or a written waiver.
Even so, the probate division held an evidentiary hearing and heard testimony that the property was sold at online public auctions and that the value of each asset was set by the highest amount participants, including third parties, were willing to bid. The court applied the burden allocation from In re Lissner’s Estate, 129 S.W.2d 1067 (Mo. App. K.C. 1939): the conservator satisfies her statutory duty by presenting the settlement, and the party taking exception carries the burden of proving that items should not have been allowed. The brother did not carry it.
Acceptance of a final settlement presents a mixed question of fact and law. The appellate court defers to the trial court’s factual findings where supported by competent and substantial evidence, and reviews the application of law to those facts without deference.
That standard did most of the work. The circumstances of the sale and the value received are questions of fact, and the circuit court sits closer to the witnesses. On that record the panel could not find legal error in approving the amended final settlement.
What the court expressly did not decide
A footnote deserves as much attention as the holding. The Southern District stated that it was not reaching the propriety of the conservator bidding at the estate auction in her individual capacity, whether that conduct amounted to a breach of fiduciary duty or a conflict of interest, whether her participation was contemplated or authorized by the sale order, whether it actually produced personal gain, or whether the brother’s own bidding ratified the auctions or estopped his challenge.
That reservation matters because Missouri has a statute directly on the subject. Section 475.341 provides that, except when a public administrator is serving, a transaction entered into by a conservator for the conservator’s own personal gain, or otherwise affected by a conflict between fiduciary and personal interests, is voidable unless it was approved by the court or falls within three narrow exceptions. Nothing in this opinion blesses a conservator bidding on estate property. It holds only that this objector, in this forum, at this stage, could not obtain relief.
If you are serving as a conservator in Missouri
Seek advance court approval in the sale order for anything that could look like self-dealing, and say so plainly in the motion. Section 475.341 treats court approval as the difference between a voidable transaction and a durable one.
Calendar the settlement deadlines. Section 475.270 requires annual settlements, and Section 475.083 ends your authority at the protectee’s death except for winding up.
Track your expenses. Sections 475.320 and 475.205 contemplate that obligations incurred by the conservator for the benefit of the protectee or the estate may survive as claims filed in the probate division. That is exactly where the court sent this conservator’s appellate attorney fee request, denied without prejudice to refiling against the decedent’s estate.
Why this reaches beyond Pulaski County
Most contested adult guardianship and conservatorship matters in the St. Louis area involve siblings who disagree about how a parent’s money was handled. This opinion draws three lines that hold across the state. Objections to a sale order belong in the appeal from that order. A conservator’s duty runs to the protectee, so after death the claim belongs to the decedent’s estate and its personal representative. And the party objecting to a settlement, not the fiduciary presenting it, carries the burden of proof.
The planning lesson runs the other direction. A durable power of attorney, a trust funded during life, and a health care directive can keep a family out of a contested conservatorship entirely. When no court is asked to appoint anyone, there is no settlement to fight about. That is the ordinary purpose of an estate plan, and the least expensive route to settling an estate later.
Related on this site: No Estate Tax Doesn’t Mean No Tax Return: A Missouri Executor’s Form 1041 Obligations
Helpful resources
The coverage below is drawn from several vantage points and labeled by ownership, so you can weigh each account and reach your own conclusion.
Opinion in SD39185, In the Matter of Kyong Spruill · Missouri Judiciary, official court record, primary source.
Missouri appellate opinions by hand-down date · Missouri Judiciary, official.
Section 475.130, conservator’s duties · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, official state text.
Section 475.341, conflict of interest transactions · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, official state text.
Section 475.290, final settlement · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, official state text.
Section 475.083, termination of authority · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, official state text.
Section 475.205, claims against a protectee’s estate · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, official state text.
Section 475.320, death of a protectee · Missouri Revisor of Statutes, official state text.
The Missouri Bar newsroom and weekly case summaries · The Missouri Bar, a professional association for Missouri lawyers.
Related on this site: Fiduciary duties and why they matter when settling an estate · A Missouri estate could not pay its bills and the IRA was still beyond reach · The inherited house nobody appraised
Questions about a Missouri guardianship, conservatorship, or final settlement
Haake Law Group PC advises families in Wildwood, St. Louis, and across Missouri on guardianship, conservatorship, probate, and estate planning, and the first consultation is free.
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This article is provided for general educational purposes only and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it, or contacting the firm through it, does not create an attorney-client relationship with Haake Law Group PC or Derek R. Haake. Court decisions and statutes change, and their application depends on the specific facts of a matter. Verify any statute or opinion against the official source and consult a licensed attorney before acting.