ACTS OF ADMINISTRATION. - Those juridical acts whose object is the preservation of patrimony (or of a patrimonial asset), its fructification and the improvement of its productive capacity, even if this occurs through the disposition of income produced by the patrimony itself, are called acts of administration (or of simple or ordinary administration). Opposed to such acts are acts of disposition, or acts exceeding ordinary (or simple) administration, which are those by which the patrimony or a part of it is alienated, or a real right of security is constituted over it, or finally its marketability is notably diminished or its preservation is endangered.
The distinction between these two categories of acts has considerable relevance both in canon law and in civil law.
In canon law (cann. 532 § 2, 1527) acts exceeding ordinary administration cannot be validly performed by administrators of ecclesiastical goods without the authorization (licentia) of the competent ecclesiastical authority. In the absence of any legal definition of this category of acts, the notion must be derived from doctrine and from the system of the CIC; in this regard, the expression contained in can. 1533 (act quo conditio Ecclesiae peior fieri possit), and the acts enumerated in cann. 1538, 1541 and 1542, are also to be kept in mind.
In Italian law likewise, without the authorization of the competent authority, the following cannot perform acts exceeding ordinary administration: a) certain ecclesiastical bodies (congruable benefices, confraternities not having an exclusive or prevalent purpose of worship, factory boards); b) the majority of public bodies; c) the legal representatives of persons lacking capacity (but for this case not all acts of this category are always regulated in the same way); d) the mandatory furnished with a general mandate.
In Italian law too there is no definition of acts exceeding ordinary administration; the law more often gives illustrative (rarely exhaustive) enumerations of them (cf. arts. 320, 374, 375, 394, 493, 1572, 1708 Cod. civ., and numerous special laws). In particular, as regards ecclesiastical bodies, art. 13 of the law of 27 May 1929, no. 848 indicates the following as acts exceeding ordinary administration: alienations, voluntary redemption of ground rents and dues, loans, felling of tall-trunk trees, collection and investment of capital, leases of immovable property for more than nine years, and finally, litigation, whether active or passive, pertaining to the patrimonial substance of the bodies.
Pio Ciprotti