Hart v. Mercantile Trust Co. of Baltimore

• Decision Date: 13 January 1942
• Docket Number: 81.
• Parties: HART et al. v. MERCANTILE TRUST CO. OF BALTIMORE et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

23 A.2d 682

180 Md. 218

HART et al. v. MERCANTILE TRUST CO. OF BALTIMORE et al.

No. 81.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

January 13, 1942

Appeal from Circuit Court, Anne Arundel County; James E. Boylan Jr., Judge.

Suit by Grace Hart and others against the Mercantile Trust Company of Baltimore, executor of the estate of Walter H. Hart deceased, for a declaratory judgment determining the rate of taxation on assets of the estate passing to plaintiffs, in which R. Glenn Prout, Register of Wills intervened. From a decree fixing the rate of taxation, plaintiffs appeal.

Reversed and remanded.

J. Royall Tippett, Jr., of Baltimore (Carlyle Barton and Robert J. MacGregor, both of Baltimore, on the brief) for appellants.

Hall Hammond, Deputy Atty. Gen. (William C. Walsh, Atty. Gen., on the brief), for appellee.

Before BOND, C.J., and SLOAN, JOHNSON, DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, FORSYTHE, and MARBURY, JJ.

BOND Chief Judge.

The question is whether a testator's children, caveators of his will, who received an additional part of his estate by virtue of a compromise agreement with a legatee corporation, are to be taxed on that part at the rate fixed for assets passing to children, one per cent, or at that on assets passing to a corporate distributee, seven and one half per cent. Article 81, section 109, of the Code provides that a tax of one per cent is levied and imposed on every one hundred dollars of the clear value of any property 'passing at the death of any resident' to children of such decedent. And section 110 of the same article provides the tax of seven and a half per cent on such property 'passing at the death of any resident' to other than the father, mother, husband, wife, children or lineal descendants of the decedent.

The will of Walter H. Hart, of Annapolis, who died on March 21, 1937, gave certain specific and pecuniary legacies, among them an annuity of $200 per month to each of his two daughters for ten years should she live so long, and then gave and bequeathed the residuary estate to the Salvation Army, a corporation, specifying the use it should make of the fund. The will was duly admitted to probate, and subsequently the daughters filed a petition and caveat to it. Before the issues were tried in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County the residuary legatee named, the daughters and the executor, entered into an agreement compromising the dispute, and providing that to effectuate it the will should be judicially determined to be valid, and an order sustaining it should be entered by the Orphans Court of Anne Arundel County, that the pecuniary and specific legacies should be paid, that sufficient real estate in the assets should be sold to raise money for the necessary payments and distributions, that the daughters should assign to the Salvation Army all their right and interest as legatees, devisees or annuitants, and that the Salvation Army should then receive the remainder of the convey and assign one half of the net estate, taxes and expenses, retain $25,000, and convey and assign one half of the net extate, not exceeding $100,000, to the daughters as tenants in common. A verdict sustaining the will was then entered in pursuance of the agreement.

Judge Linwood L. Clark, who in a clause of the will bequeathing him a specific legacy had been requested to see that the will was faithfully carried out with justice to everyone, filed in the Circuit Court in equity a bill of complaint seeking assumption of jurisdiction of that court for the purposes of settlement of the estate, instructions to him for proceeding upon the request, and ratification of the agreement made; and the court ratified the agreement and retained jurisdiction for settlement and distribution according to its terms. As stated in an opinion filed in that proceeding, it was determined that the compromise agreement was entered into in good faith, to...