Commonwealth v. Duffield

• Decision Date: 01 January 1851
• Citation: Commonwealth v. Duffield, 12 Pa. 277 (Pa. 1851)
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. DUFFIELD.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

12 Pa. 277

COMMONWEALTHv.DUFFIELD.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

IN error from the Common Pleas of Cumberland.

Miller and Hepburn, for plaintiff in error.—The fund was the property of the testatrix and assets to pay her debts, because she had a general power of appointment: Sug. on Pow. 336, and the cases there cited from 2 Vern. 319 to 12 Ves. 205.To the same effect are Powell on Powers, 368;2 Wms. Ex. 1037.Her right on the execution of the power relates to the death of the donor: 7 Ves. 506.

Being then her property and personal, its locality is at the domicile of the owner, and both appointor and appointee being domiciled here, the legacy was subject to our laws and taxable: 1 H. Bl. 690.It is an error to suppose the appointee could recover the fund immediately; on the contrary, being assets, it could only be lawfully received by her as executrix: 5 Watts, 187, was a special power.

W. M. Biddle, contrà.—This was not property of Margaret McDonald, but a mere power.Her estate was an annuity or annual income confined to her life; the fund passed under the original will on execution of the power.Had there been a general devise, with the power superadded, the case would have been different: 1 Sug. Pow. 123; Ward on Leg. 242;13 Ves. 445.But the English rule has never been carried out unless the fund was in England, and in favour of creditors.How can she be said to have "died possessed of the property within the State," when no right under her existed till after her death, and none was in her till the will operated?The executors have no right as such to foreign property, and the Act only operates upon so much as was within and protected by the laws of the State: 5 Barr, 142.The machinery employed for collecting the tax shows this.No one but the executor is liable or can be reached, and he was not entitled: 5 Watts, 187.

GIBSON, C. J.

The enjoyment of this legacy by the immediate legatee was expressly limited to her lifetime, and she consequently took a particular interest in it, joined to a power of appointment at her death.Had it been bequeathed to her by an inhabitant of Pennsylvania, it would have been taxable as her property when she received it, and payment of the tax would not have been deferred till her death; but the testator was an inhabitant of Maryland, and the statute imposes no tax on a legacy brought here from abroad.But money appointed by will under a general power to appoint for any purpose, is held by English chancellors to be equitable assets for payment of the appointor's debts; whence an impression that the money appointed in this case was transmitted by the appointor's will as part of her effects, and consequently taxable before it came to the hands of her appointee.Truly speaking, it was not.Such a fund is certainly not legal assets, for it does not go into the executor's hands in a course of administration.It could not be a part of the appointor's effects while he was living, and it cannot be so when he is dead; for a title which did not vest in him when he had capacity to take, could not vest in him when his capacity was lost.Yet an English chancellor intercepts the money on its way to the appointee, and applies it to the appointor's debts, not as an actual part of his effects, but as what, according to the chancellor's notion of justice, ought to have been made so for the benefit of his creditors.As was said in Harrington v. Hale, 1 Cox, 132, he stops it in transitu when a step has been taken to appoint it to the use of any one else; and this arbitrary control of the direction given by the testator to his bounty through the agency of his proxy, is strangely put upon the obligation of the proxy to pay his debts; the assumed violation of which, in not paying them with money filched from his wife or child — in not robbing Peter to pay Paul — is held to give his creditors a specific equity against his appointee!"It may be a hard case," said Lord Hardwicke, in Townsend v. Windham, 1 Ves. 8, "but I must not make a precedent that men may make a provision for their families in prejudice of their creditors."Notwithstanding my habitual respect for the judgment of that great man, I am unable to see any wrong of which the creditors could complain.There is such flagrant injustice in applying the bounty of a testator to the benefit of those for whom it was not intended, that the mind revolts from it.An appointee derives title immediately from the donor of the power, by the instrument in which it was created; and consequently not under but paramount to the appointor, by whom it was executed: by reason of which it is impossible to conceive that the appointor's creditors have an equity.A man who is employed to manage the conduit-pipe of another's munificence, is authorized by a general power of disposal to turn the stream of it to any person or point within the compass of his discretion; and his creditors have no right in justice or reason to control...