ADMINISTRATION, ACTS OF. — Acts of administration (or of simple or ordinary administration) are those legal acts whose object is the preservation of the patrimony (or of a patrimonial asset), the production of income from it, and the improvement of its productive capacity, even when this takes place through the disposition of the income produced by the patrimony itself. Contrasted with such acts are acts of disposition, or acts exceeding ordinary (or simple) administration, which are those by which the patrimony or part of it is alienated, or a real security right is constituted over it, or finally its marketability is substantially diminished or its preservation is placed in jeopardy.
The distinction between these two categories of acts is of considerable importance both in canon law and in civil law.
In canon law (cann. 532 § 2, 1527), acts exceeding ordinary administration cannot validly be performed by administrators of ecclesiastical property without the authorization (licentia) of the competent ecclesiastical authority. Since there is no legal definition of this category of acts, the notion must be inferred from the doctrine and 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 must also be taken into consideration.
Likewise, under Italian law, the following may not, without the authorization of the competent authority, perform acts exceeding ordinary administration: a) certain ecclesiastical entities (benefices eligible for adequate endowment, confraternities not having worship as their exclusive or predominant purpose, and church-fabric boards); b) the majority of public bodies; c) the legal representatives of legally incapable persons (although, in this case, not all acts in this category are always governed in the same manner); d) an agent vested with a general mandate.
Italian law likewise lacks a definition of acts exceeding ordinary administration; the law more often provides illustrative (rarely exhaustive) lists of them (cf. arts. 320, 374, 375, 394, 493, 1572, and 1708 of the Civil Code, and numerous special laws). In particular, with regard to ecclesiastical entities, art. 13 of Law no. 848 of 27 May 1929 identifies the following as acts exceeding ordinary administration: alienations, voluntary redemption of perpetual rents and ground rents, loans, the felling of tall trees, the collection and investment of capital, leases of immovable property for more than nine years, and, finally, litigation, whether as plaintiff or defendant, relating to the entities’ patrimonial assets. Pio Ciprotti