Lazar Estate
Lazar Estate
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
In this action we are called upon to decide whether the payment of $150,000 in compromise of a disputed claim is a taxable transfer under the Inheritance and Estate Tax Act of 1961, P. L. 373, Art. YI, 72 P.S. §2485-632.
The relevant facts are as follows. Décedent, Lena G. Lazar (Lena) and Milton C. Lazar (Milton), were married in 1903 and remained married and without issue until his death on September 4,1947. By written agreement dated May 18, 1947 Milton agreed to main
Milton’s will did bequeath his entire estate to Lena. At ■ the time of his death, the value of assets owned jointly by Milton and Lena had an approximate value of $260,000 while the value of assets owned by Milton individually was approximately $1900. As of January 22, 1965, the date of Lena’s death, the value of her estate, including the assets of a trust created by her on- February 11, 1963, was approximately $786,000. (In the 1917 agreement decedent agreed not to make .gifts- from the inheritance except normal charitable gifts and gifts to family members in case of financial emergency).
Decedent’s last will, dated January 18, 1983, made no bequest to any of the proposed beneficiaries designated in the 1917 agreement with the exception of two who were each bequeathed $25,000. The will further provided for the annulment and revocation of the bequest to any beneficiary who sought to enforce the 1917 agreement. . Lena’s executor, appellant, took the position that the 1917 agreement was invalid and unenforceable because of the failure of the actual intended consideration and that any claim based on the agreement would cause the forfeiture of any bequest to the claimant. . Counsel for all of Milton’s then living designees contended that the 1917 agreement was valid and en
Thereafter, appellant claimed as a deduction, for inheritance tax purposes, in Lena’s estate the compromised claim of $150,000 which was disallowed by the Commonwealth. The court below sustained the disallowance of the claimed deduction on the basis of Sections 632 and 662 of the Inheritance Tax Statute.
It is axiomatic that only those deductions which the Inheritance Tax Act itself specified can be allowed. In Section 601 it states, “[t]he only deductions from the value of the property transferred shall be those set forth in this Article.” Section 631 says “[a] 11 liabilities of the decedent shall be deductible, subject to the limitations hereinafter set forth.” Section 632 represents one of those limitations and states: “Except as otherwise provided in sections 638 and 639 [not relevant to this action], the deductions hereinafter set forth for indebtedness of the decedent, when founded upon a promise or agreement, shall be limited to the extent that it was contracted bona fide and for an adequate and full consideration in money or money’s worth.” The purpose of this section and the similar provisions of the federal estate tax law, 26 U.S.C.A. §2053 (c), is to prevent the depletion of a decedent’s taxable estate by the creation of indebtedness intended as a substitute for a taxable bequest. “The purpose
• ■ It is appellant’s contention that he is not subject to the limitation contained in Section 632 because that section “has no application to damage claims for breach of an alleged contract whose validity is repudiated by decedent and her executor and not established, or to a payment made by decedent’s executor, not in compliance with such agreement, but in compromise of litigation involving its validity.” In dealing with the claimants, it was appellant’s position that the agreement was invalid and unenforceable because of :a failure of the intended' consideration in ¡that Lena was going to receive $260,000 of the $262,000 by operation of law regardless of what Milton provided in his will. It is not necessary for us to determine whether appellant was correct in taking that position. He has chosen to assert the inapplicability of Section 632
The error that appellant has made is in assuming ■that if Section 632 is inapplicable he automatically •receives the deduction. He states “[t]he deduction for such payment, therefore, was not subject to the limitation imposed by Section 632, but was authorized as a
Appellant must be denied the deduction because he has not shown what section of the statute grants it to him. The decree of the court below is affirmed. Costs on the appellant.
We agree with appellant that Section 662 which denies a deduction for a claim by a spouse or others under an agreement insofar as the claim arises in consideration of a relinquishment of marital or support rights is not relevant to this action. That is because the 1947 agreement nowhere indicates that relinquishment of marital or support rights played any role as consideration.
Apparently appellant did not want the payment to be judged by the standards of Section 632 because he realized the consideration for the agreement, mutual promises, would not satisfy the “adequate and full' consideration in money or money’s worth.”
Concurring Opinion
Concurring Opinion by
While I concur in the result reaached by the majority, I do so because I believe that the payment made in this case is specifically made nondeductible by the Inheritance and Estate Tax Act of 1961, P. L. 373, 72 P.S. §§2485-101 to 2485-1201. It is my opinion that the claim presented by Milton Lazar’s designees was a liability of Lena Lazar’s estate within the meaning of §631, 72 P.S. §2485-631, and that the payment made in satisfaction of that claim was therefore deductible
However, it is my view that §632 of the act, 72 P.S. §2485-632, disallows any deduction for the payment made in satisfaction of this liability. Section 632 provides that: “Except as otherwise provided in sections 638 and 639, the deductions hereinafter set forth for indebtedness of the decedent, when founded upon a promise or agreement, shall be limited to the extent that it was contracted bona fide and for an adequate and full consideration in money or money’s Avorth.” I think it clear that this liability was “foundded upon a promise or agreement” Avithin the meaning of §632. The designees’ claim Avas grounded in and dependent upon the 1947 agreement between Milton and Lena, and I cannot believe that the intervening negotiations and litigation in any way affected the genesis of the asserted liability.
Having reached this conclusion, it is my view that •the deduction should not be alloAved because the indebtedness was not supported by “an adequate and full consideration in money or money’s worth.” I do not question the bona fides of the transaction or the presence of sufficient consideration to make the contract enforceable. But it is clear to me that §632 requires more than just legally sufficient consideration. Ninety-nine percent of Milton Lazar’s property Avas held by the entireties with his Avife; therefore the only consideration which he could have passed to Lena as compensation for her promise to leave his designees seventy-five percent of her estate was the right to possibly inherit some $2,000. Since this is hardly
Concurring Opinion
Concurring Opinion by
I concur in the result reached by the majority, and with much of the reasoning of the majority opinion. I add this brief additional opinion because the majority seems to consider the question as one of first impression, when in fact there is what I consider to be controlling precedent.
Section 832 of the Inheritance and Estate Tax Act of 1961 was suggested by the Act of 1939, P. L. 721, §1, 72 P.S. §2302, and, as the Joint State Government Commission observes in its 1963 report, is in conformity with existing law. 72 P.S. §2485-632. This Court construed the same statutory language which is involved in this case in Hitchcock Estate, 385 Pa. 569, 124 A. 2d 360 (1956). The facts there were very much the same as those here, except that the promise of the surviving spouse to provide for the heirs of the deceased husband was contained in a “joint will and contract” instead of in a separate agreement. The widow, by a codicil after her husband died, limited the bequests to her husband’s side of the family to one-half of the joint estate as it existed at the date of his death. The value was greater at the time of her death, and the husband’s heirs asserted a claim against the estate for one-half of the higher value. The claim was compromised at 43%. The widow’s executor contended that the amount paid in the settlement of the testamentary claims was a proper deduction in calculating the clear value of the estate subject to inheritance tax. The Court, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Charles Alvin Jones, held that the payments were not supported by adequate and full consideration in money or money’s worth; that they were in effect “testamentary, bene
I think the rationale of the Hitchcock decision is equally applicable to the case at bar.
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