Lober v. United States

• Decision Date: 02 December 1952
• Docket Number: No. 49290.,49290.
• Citation: 124 Ct. Cl. 44,108 F. Supp. 731
• Parties: LOBER et al. v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Claims Court

108 F. Supp. 731

124 Ct. Cl. 44

LOBER et al. v. UNITED STATES.

No. 49290.

United States Court of Claims.

Decided December 2, 1952.

David Stock, New York City (Ehrich, Stock, Leighton & Holland, New York City, on the brief), for the plaintiffs.

Elizabeth B. Davis, Washington, D. C., Charles S. Lyon, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Andrew D. Sharpe, Special Asst. to the Atty. Gen., was on the brief), for the defendant.

Before JONES, Chief Judge, and LITTLETON, WHITAKER, MADDEN and HOWELL, Judges.

MADDEN, Judge.

This is a suit by the executors of Morris Lober to recover certain estate taxes which the Government collected from the estate. They claim that the taxes were computed upon assets which were not properly includible in the estate, for tax purposes. The assets in question were the subject matter of separate trusts, created by Morris Lober in 1924, for his son Robert T. Lober, and in 1929 for his son James Morris Lober and for his daughter, Maxine Lober. These beneficiaries were in early childhood when the trusts were created. Morris Lober did not die until 1942.

Each of the trusts provided that the principal of the trust should be paid over to the beneficiary when he reached the age of twenty-five. Morris Lober, who was himself the trustee of each trust, had the power, according to the trust instrument, in his discretion to accumulate any part of the income until the beneficiary came of age. Either before or after the beneficiary reached majority, the trustee could, in his discretion, pay over a part or all of the principal to the beneficiary. The trust instruments made no provision for a gift over to any one else, in case a beneficiary died before reaching twenty-five, and had not, before his death, received the principal of his fund.

Our question is whether the powers which Morris Lober retained over the assets which he placed in these trusts, the power to accumulate income during the beneficiaries' minority and the power to, in effect, terminate the trust in part or in whole by paying over a part or all of the principal to the beneficiary before he reached the age of twenty-five, were such elements of control as kept the assets within Morris Lober's estate, for estate tax purposes. Another question will be posed and commented on hereinafter.

Section 811(d) (2) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C.A. § 811(d) (2), provided that there should be included, for estate tax purposes, in the gross estate of a decedent, any property which the decedent had transferred in trust, where the enjoyment of the property was, at the date of the decedent's death, subject to the decedent's power to alter, amend, or revoke the trust. The Supreme Court held, in Commissioner v. Estate of Holmes, 326 U.S. 480, 66 S.Ct. 257, 260, 90 L.Ed. 228, that the termination of a trust was covered by the words "alter, amend, or revoke". The Government urges that the decedent here had the power to terminate the trusts by paying over the trust assets to the beneficiaries at any time before they would have had to be so paid over under the terms of the trust instruments, and that therefore the assets were covered by Section 811(d) (2) as interpreted in the Holmes case.

The plaintiffs distinguish the Holmes case, supra, upon the ground that there the trust instrument provided for a gift over to other persons if a primary beneficiary should not survive the fifteen year period of the trust, and had not received the principal before his death. The gifts over were to the beneficiary's children, if any survived him; if none, to the beneficiary's brothers or their surviving children per stirpes; if none to the settlor's widow, if living; if not to her heirs. In the Holmes case, then, the settlor trustee could, by terminating the trust by the payment over of the principal before the required date, cut off the potential interests of various persons who might have received the property if it had been kept in trust and the beneficiary had died before the time when payment of the principal was mandatory.

The plaintiffs urge that in the instant case the settlor could, by the premature payment over of the principal, only cut off the chance of the heirs of the beneficiary to enjoy the property, as they would have done if the property had been kept in the trust and the beneficiary had died before reaching the age of twenty-five. We assume, for present purposes that this is true; that the beneficiary had an inheritable interest in the trust res so that the right to receive the principal would have passed to his estate, rather than returning to the settlor, which would seem to be the only other possible disposition of it.

In Commissioner v. Holmes, supra, the Supreme Court said:

"It seems obvious that one who has the power to terminate contingencies upon which the right of enjoyment is staked, so as to make certain that a beneficiary will have it who may never come into it if the power is not exercised, has power which affects not only the time of enjoyment but also the person or persons who may enjoy the donation. More therefore is involved than mere acceleration of the time of enjoyment. The very right of enjoyment is affected, the difference dependent upon the grantor's power being be-between present substantial benefit and the mere prospect or possibility, even the probability, that one may have it at some uncertain future time or perhaps not at all. A donor who keeps so strong a hold over the actual and immediate enjoyment of what he puts beyond his own power to retake has not divested himself of that degree of control which § 811(d) (2) requires in order to avoid the tax."

This reasoning seems to us to be conclusive of the instant case. The power of the settlor to pay over the principal was, in truth, the power to determine whether the beneficiary should, or should not, have the enjoyment of the property. As the Supreme Court said, it was not a mere question of acceleration of payment, of whether he should enjoy the property sooner or later, but whether he should enjoy it at all, or not. The identification of a living person with his heirs, as in the Rule in Shelley's Case, or the doctrine of worthier title, has no doubt served some purpose in our land law. But for the practical purpose of determining whether the creator of a trust has retained enough of the incidents of ownership or control to make it probable that Congress intended to tax the trust res as a part of his estate, such an identification lacks reality. A father who has the power to decide that his son should have certain assets to use, enjoy, spend, waste or invest, or to decide that he shall not have them at all for any of these purposes, but that his creditors, his children, wife, or collateral relatives should have them, has a significant control over the assets. We think it is substantially the kind of control which the Supreme Court was dealing with in Commissioner v. Holmes.

We have reached the above conclusion upon the assumption that the beneficiaries had vested interests which would have descended to their heirs had they died before reaching the age of twenty-five. The Government urges that they did not have vested interests, and that the assets would in that case have reverted to the settlor by reason of the failure of the trust. If the Government is right, the trust property was clearly includible in the taxable estate of the settlor. The question is, of course, a question of New York law, and we are uncertain of the answer. Since w...