Northeastern Pennsylvania National Bank Trust Company v. United States, 637

• Decision Date: 22 May 1967
• Docket Number: No. 637,637
• Citation: 387 U.S. 213,87 S.Ct. 1573,18 L.Ed.2d 726
• Parties: NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL BANK & TRUST COMPANY, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

387 U.S. 213

87 S.Ct. 1573

18 L.Ed.2d 726

NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL BANK & TRUST COMPANY, Petitioner,

v UNITED STATES.

No. 637.

Argued March 20, 1967.

Decided May 22, 1967.

Milton I. Baldinger, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Richard C. Pugh, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice FORTAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue in this case is whether a bequest in trust providing for the monthly payment to decedent's widow of a fixed amount can qualify for the estate tax marital deduction under § 2056(b)(5) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U.S.C. § 2056(b)(5). That section allows a marital deduction from a decedent's adjusted gross estate of up to one-half the value of the estate in respect to specified interests which pass to the surviving spouse. Among the interests which qualify is one in which the surviving spouse 'is entitled for life to * * * all the income from a specific portion (of the trust property), payable annually or at more frequent intervals, with power in the surviving spouse to appoint * * * such specific portion * * *.'¹

At the date of decedent's death, the value of the trust corpus created by his will was $69,246. The will provided that his widow should receive $300 per month until decedent's youngest child reached 18, and $350 per month thereafter. If the trust income were insufficient, corpus could be invaded to make the specified payments; if income exceeded the monthly amount, it was to be accu- mulated.

The widow was given power to appoint the entire corpus by will.²

On decedent's estate tax return, his executor reported an adjusted gross estate of $199,750. The executor claimed the maximum marital deduction of one-half the gross estate, $99,875, on the ground that qualified interests passing to the wife exceeded that amount. The value of the property which passed to the widow outright was $41,751. To this the executor added the full value of the trust, $69,246. The Commissioner, however, determined that the trust did not qualify for the marital deduction because the widow's right to the income of the trust was not expressed as a 'fractional or percentile share' of the total trust income, as the Treasury Regulation, § 20.2056(b)—5(c), requires. Accordingly, the Commis- sioner reduced the amount of the allowable deduction to $41,751. The resulting deficiency in estate tax was paid, a claim for refund was disallowed, the executor sued in District Court for refund, and the District Judge gave summary judgment for the executor. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 363 F.2d 476, sitting en banc, reversed, with three judges dissenting. Because of an acknowledged conflict between the decision of the Third Circuit in this case and that of the Seventh Circuit in Citizens National Bank of Evansville v. United States, 359 F.2d 817, petition for certiorari pending, No. 488, October Term, 1966,³ we granted certiorari. 385 U.S. 967, 87 S.Ct. 509, 17 L.Ed.2d 432. We reverse.

The basis for the Commissioner's disallowance lay in Treasury Regulation § 20.2056(b)—5(c). This interpretative Regulation purports to define 'specific portion' as it is used in § 2056(b)(5) of the Code: 'A partial interest in property is not treated as a specific portion of the entire interest unless the rights of the surviving spouse in income * * * constitute a fractional or percentile share of a property interest * * *.' The Regulation specifically provides that 'if the annual income of the spouse is limited to a specific sum * * * the interest is not a deductible interest.'⁴ If this Regulation properly implements the Code, the trust in this case plainly fails to qualify for the marital deduction. We hold, however, that in the context of this case the Regulation improperly restricts the scope of the congressionally granted deduction.

In the District Court, the executor initially claimed that the entire trust qualified for the marital deduction simply because, at the time of trial, the corpus had not yet produced an income in excess of $300 per month, and that the widow was therefore entitled 'to all the income from the entire interest.' The District Court rejected this contention, observing that the income from the corpus could exceed $330 per month, and in that event the excess would have to be accumulated. The executor's alternative claim, which the District Court accepted, was that the 'specific portion' of the trust corpus whose income would amount to $300 per month could be computed, and a deduction allowed for that amount.⁵

Resolution of the question in this case, whether a qualifying 'specific portion' an be computed from the monthly stipend specified in a decedent's will, is essentially a matter of discovering the intent of Congress. The general history of the marital deduction is well known. See United States v. Stapf, 375 U.S. 118, 128, 84 S.Ct. 248, 255, 11 L.Ed.2d 195 (1963). The deduction was enacted in 1948, and the underlying purpose was to equalize the incidence of the estate tax in community property and common-law jurisdictions. Under a community property system a surviving spouse takes outright ownership of half of the community property, which therefore is not included in the deceased spouse's estate. The marital deduction allows transfer of up to one-half of non-community property to the surviving spouse free of the estate tax. Congress, however, allowed the deduction even when the interest transferred is less than the outright ownership which community property affords. In 'recognition of one of the customary modes of transfer of property in common-law States,'⁶ the 1948 statute provided that a bequest in trust, with the surviving spouse 'entitled for life to all the income from the corpus of the trust, payable annually or at more frequent intervals, with power * * * to appoint the entire corpus'⁷ would qualify for the deduction.

The 1948 legislation required that the bequest in trust entitle the surviving spouse to 'all the income' from the trust corpus, and grant a power to appoint the 'entire corpus.' These requirements were held by several lower courts to disqualify for the deduction a single trust in which the surviving spouse was granted a right to receive half (for example) of the income and to appoint half of the corpus.⁸ Since there was no good reason to require a testator to create two separate trusts—one for his wife, the other for his children, for example—Congress in 1954 revised the marital deduction provision of the statute to allow the deduction where a decedent gives his surviving spouse 'all the income from the entire interest, or all the income from a specific portion thereof' and a power to 'appoint the entire interest, or such specific portion'. The House Report on this change states that 'The bill makes it clear that * * * a right to income plus a general power of appointment over only an undivided part of the property will qualify that part of the property for the marital deduction.'⁹ The Senate Report contains identical language.¹⁰ There is no indication in the legislative history of the change from which one could conclude that Congress—in using the words 'all the income from a specific portion' in the statute, or the equivalent words 'a right to income * * * over * * * an undivided part' in the committee reports—intended that the deduction afforded would be defeated merely because the 'specific portion' or the 'undivided part' was not expressed by the testator in terms of a 'fractional or percentile share' of the whole corpus.¹¹

Congress' intent to afford a liberal 'estate-splitting' possibility to married couples, where the deductible half of the decedent's estate would ultimately—if not consumed—be taxable in the estate of the survivor, is unmistakable. Indeed, in § 93 of the Technical Amendments Act of 1958, 72 Stat. 1668, Congress made 'The more realistic rules of the 1954 Code' apply retroactively to the original enactment of the marital deduction in 1948, and opened the statute of limitations to allow refunds or credits for overpayments.¹² Plainly such a provision should not be construed so as to impose unwarranted restrictions upon the availability of the deduction. Yet the Government insists that even where there are well-established principles for computing the principal required to produce the monthly stipend provided for in a trust, a 'specific portion' cannot be determined in that way. The 'specific portion' must, the Government urges, be expressed in the trust as a fractional or percentile share of the total corpus. The spouse of a testator whose will provides for a specific monthly stipend is deprived of any benefit from the marital deduction, according to the Government's view. But we can find no warrant for that narrow view, in common sense or in the statute and its history.

The Government puts most of its reliance upon a phrase which occurred once in the legislative history of the 1948 enactment. The Senate Report stated that the marital deduction would be available 'where the surviving spouse, by reason of her (sic) right to the income and a power of appointment, is the virtual owner of the property.'¹³ The Government's argument is that the deduction was intended only in cases where the equivalent of the outright ownership of a community property State was granted, and that this is what the Senate Report meant by the words 'virtual owner.' Actually, however, the words were not used in that context at all. The section of the Report from which those words derive deals with the rule that, with minor exceptions, the marital deduction does not apply where any person other than the surviving spouse has any power over the income or corpus of the trust. It is in this sense that the Report described the surviving spouse as a 'virtual owner.' Hence, the Government's argument that only a grant of the income from a fractional or percentile share subjects the surviving spouse to the vagaries and...