In re Bordeaux' Estate

• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: ROBINSON
• Citation: In re Bordeaux' Estate, 225 P.2d 433, 37 Wn.2d 561 (Wash. 1950)
• Decision Date: 07 December 1950
• Docket Number: 31422.
• Parties: In re BORDEAUX' ESTATE.

225 P.2d 433

37 Wn.2d 561

In re BORDEAUX' ESTATE.

No. 31422.

Supreme Court of Washington, en Banc.

December 7, 1950

Rehearing Denied January 22, 1951. Smith Troy, William C. Klein, Olympia, for appellant.

Ryan Askren & Mathewson, Seattle, for respondent.

ROBINSON, Justice.

This case involves the construction of the terminology of an inheritance tax statute. From a decision adverse to its contention, the inheritance tax division of the tax commission of the state of Washington has taken this appeal.

Chester Raymond Bordeaux and Russell Bordeaux were ten and five years of age respectively, when their father, Thomas Bordeaux, married their stepmother, Sarah Esther Bordeaux, in 1900. They were brought up by their stepmother entirely as if she had been their natural mother, and the evidence is replete with indications that an unusually strong filial relationship existed between her and them. As Chester Raymond Bordeaux testified, 'To all intents and purposes, she was our mother and we referred to her as such.' This relationship continued after the death of Thomas Bordeaux, which did not take place until thirty-four years after the marriage.

Upon the death of Thomas Bordeaux, Sarah Esther Bordeaux inherited her share of the community property accumulated during the marriage, and, when she died in 1949, the bulk of this property passed, by virtue of her will, to her stepsons. (We employ the term 'stepsons' advisedly here.) The problem Before us is to decide into what class of beneficiaries Chester Raymond Bordeaux and Russell Bordeaux fall. The answer to this question will determine the amount of inheritance tax which is to be assessed against the property.

To the layman, at least, the inheritance tax statutes would appear to be explicit on the point. The pertinent portion thereof reads, in part, as follows:

'An inheritance tax shall be imposed on all estates, subject to this act and other inheritance tax acts of the State of Washington * * * at the following rates:

'Class A. Any devise, bequest, legacy, gift or beneficial interest to any property or income therefrom which shall pass to any grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, husband, wife, child or stepchild, adopted child or lineal descendant of any adopted child, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, or lineal descendant of the deceased is hereby denominated as Class A.' Rem.Supp.1943, § 11202. (Italics ours.)

In spite of this apparently unequivocal language, appellant asserts that Mrs. Bordeaux's legacy to her stepsons falls, not within Class A, but, rather, within Class C, which includes all bequests made to those individuals not enumerated in either Class A or Class B (the latter classification covering only bequests to brothers and sisters). Bequests falling within Class A are taxed at markedly lower rates than those falling within Class C, and, if the contention of appellant is sustained, the effect will be to increase the amount of inheritance tax due from $20,305.08 to $76,180.78. Appellant's argument that this would be proper is based upon its view that Chester Raymond and Russell Bordeaux were not, in legal effect, 'stepchildren' of Sarah Esther Bordeaux at the time of her death.

No one disputes, of course, that Chester Raymond and Russell Bordeaux were 'stepchildren' of Sarah Esther Bordeaux until the death of their natural father; and there can be little doubt that, in the popular understanding of the term at least, they remained such even after this took place. Webster's New International Dictionary defines 'stepchild' simply as 'a child of one's wife or husband by a former marriage,' and that this is also the usual legal definition. See Sharp v. Borough of Vineland, 183 A. 911, 14 N.J.Misc. 256; Dangerfield v. Indemnity Ins. Co., La.App., 19 So.2d 598; Lunceford v. Fegles Construction Co., 185 Minn. 31, 239 N.W. 673. But it is the contention of appellant that, upon the death of Thomas Bordeaux, something called the 'tie of affinity' was severed, with the result that Chester Raymond and Russell Bordeaux automatically ceased to be stepchildren of Sarah Esther Bordeaux, and became, instead, legal strangers to her. This proposition, difficult to understand on its face, becomes even more anomalous when note is taken of one additional point. Thomas and Sarah Esther Bordeaux had one child, a half brother to Chester Raymond and Russell, who died in infancy. It appears to be conceded by all that had this child been alive at the time of the death of Sarah Esther Bordeaux, Chester Raymond and Russell would still have been 'stepchildren' and entitled to take as Class A beneficiaries, even though their natural parent had died. For then the 'tie of affinity' would not have been broken, since the living issue of the marriage in whose veins the blood of both parties was commingled, would have continued to preserve the relationship. Paddock v. Wells, 2 Barb.Ch.N.Y. 331; In re Sheard's Estate, 181 Wash. 62, 42 P.2d 34. The child having failed to outlive Sarah Esther Bordeaux, however, according to the view of appellant, the right of Chester Raymond and Russell Bordeaux to be considered her stepchildren terminated prior to her death. See Abbe of Stratford's Case, Year Book 10, Henry VII, 7, pl. 13.

Now all of the reasoning above set forth has a dubiously logical foundation in certain medieval premises which we will presently explore; but it makes very little common sense. Indeed, appellant does not contend that it does, but urges that we are required to adopt it because of our prior decision in Re Raine's Estate, 193 Wash. 394, 75 P.2d 933, which indubitably held, in construing a predecessor of the statute in question, that the legislature, by its use of the word 'stepchild,' intended to benefit only those children whose natural parents outlived their stepparents, unless, as we have noted, the stepparents and natural parents happened to leave issue surviving them. We have re-examined this case in detail in order to determine whether the principle of stare decisis really renders it incumbent upon us to affirm its central thesis, a proposition characterized by the trial court as 'artificial,' 'technical,' and 'legalistic.' Our conclusions are: (1) That the dictum from In re Bousman's Estate, 182 Wash. 64, 44 P.2d 1038, upon which the Raine case was based, is erroneous, and founded upon a misunderstanding of the meaning given by the courts both to the term 'affinity' and to the term 'stepchild,' and (2) that, in any event, the holding in the Bousman case, rather than the dictum contained therein, was controlling, and should have been followed in the Raine case. Had this view of the matter been taken, the legislature would have been held to have intended the common meaning of the word 'stepchild,' rather than the somewhat fanciful significance which this court, instead, assigned to it.

It should already be apparent that we are here dealing with an extremely recondite branch of the law. Yet, as was observed in Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen v. Hogan, D.C., 5 F.Supp. 598, 601, 'There has been a striking absence of any extended discussion or reasoning', concerning the subject. For this reason, in order to understand the Raine case, it will not suffice to dismiss the matter with perfunctory discussion of one or two authorities, and we have found it necessary to digress at unusual length upon the legal history which proceded and led up to that decision.

As we shall attempt to show, the term 'affinity' is not susceptible of precise definition. Broadly speaking, however, it may be regarded as the connection existing in consequence of marriage between each of the married persons and the kindred of the other. It is distinguished from consanguinity, which denotes relationship by blood. Carman v. Newell, 1 Denio, N.Y., 25. For our purposes, the abstract idea of 'affinity' appears to have originated with the medieval church. The canon law, which was in this respect derived from the Jewish law, prohibited marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity. See Coke's Institutes, Part II, p. 683. Further, it was an axiom of this law that the sexual union makes man and woman one flesh, and from this it was thought logically to follow that one's relatives by affinity occupied the same status as one's blood relations. See Butler v. Gastrill, Gilb.Ch. 156, 25 Eng.Rep.R. 110; Blackstone, Commentaries (Lewis' Edition), Book 1, chapter 15, p. 435 (Christian's Note). In consequence, the same impediment to marriage existed in the case of relationship by affinity, as in the case of relationship by consanguinity. Tiffany, Domestic Relations (3d ed.), p. 27, § 15. A marriage, for example, between a man and his deceased wife's sister was thought to be little less objectionable than a marriage between a man and his own sister. See Elliott v. Gurr, 2 Phill.Ecc. 16, 161 Eng.Rep.R. 1064.

Just how far relationship by affinity actually extended was a problem which was the cause of considerable dispute. The church, following through with 'relentless logic' the principle that man and wife are one, at first took the position that a husband must be related by affinity to the wives of his wife's kinsmen; and, at one time, a man might not marry his wife's brother's wife, his wife's first cousin's wife, or even, by virtue of a further extension of the theory, his wife's sister's husband's (second) wife. Pollock & Maitland, History of English Law, Book 2, Chapter VII, p. 388. But this extreme position was later modified; and it was said that, 'though a man is related to his wife's brother by affinity, he is not so to his wife's brother's wife, whom, if circumstances would admit, it would not be unlawful for him to marry.' Blackstone's Commentaries (Lewis Edition), Book 1, Chapter 15, p. 435 ...