§ 9-7-1.Duties of auditor

Georgia superior courts once relied on an officer called a “master” — a role borrowed from English chancery practice — to take evidence and report findings in equity cases too tangled for a judge to sort out alone from the bench. This section retires that title. Every duty a master once carried now belongs to the auditor, the office that governs the rest of this chapter.

Nothing about the underlying job changes here, only the name. An auditor is not an accountant checking a company’s books; the term describes a court-appointed officer who investigates facts, hears evidence, and reports findings and conclusions back to the court in cases too complex for a judge to manage without help.

Anyone tracing older Georgia cases that mention a “master” should read that role as the auditor’s office under a different label. The sections that follow spell out how that office gets filled, what power it carries, how it reports, and how courts review its work.