Art. 4392.Final Account

Where Article 4391 covers the recurring annual account, Article 4392 addresses the account that closes out the tutorship altogether. A tutor is free to file that final account voluntarily any time after the tutorship expires -- there is no requirement to wait for someone else to ask.

The article also identifies three situations where the court must order a final account rather than leave it to the tutor's discretion. The first is when the former minor, once the tutorship has ended, applies for one -- typically because the person who was once under tutorship, now capable of managing their own affairs, wants a complete reckoning of what happened to their property. The second and third both involve a tutorship ending involuntarily or by request rather than by the minor reaching majority: a judgment ordering the tutor's removal, or a judgment authorizing the tutor's resignation.

In each of those triggering situations, the accounting requirement follows naturally from how the tutorship ended. A former minor deserves a full accounting of a tutorship that has run its course, and a tutor who is removed or who resigns should not be able to walk away from the role without settling accounts on what was done with the minor's property while they held it.