Vanderbilt v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

• Decision Date: 08 December 1937
• Docket Number: No. 3248.,3248.
• Citation: 93 F.2d 360
• Parties: VANDERBILT et al. v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

93 F.2d 360 (1937)

VANDERBILT et al. v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE.

No. 3248.

Circuit Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

December 8, 1937.

Hugh C. Bickford, of Washington, D. C. (George Gordon Battle, of New York City, and Paul Haworth, Dante Galotta, and R. Kemp Slaughter, all of Washington, D. C., on the brief), for petitioners for review.

Robert N. Anderson, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen. (James W. Morris, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Sewall Key, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., on the brief), for Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Before BINGHAM, WILSON, and MORTON, Circuit Judges.

BINGHAM, Circuit Judge.

This is a petition to review an order or decision of the Board of Tax Appeals sustaining a deficiency assessment against the estate of Alva E. Belmont for the year 1933, in the sum of $31,425.13.

The question raised by the petition is whether, under section 303 (a) (3) of the Revenue Act of 1926, 26 U.S.C.A. § 412 (d) and note, the executors were entitled to deduct from the value of the gross estate, for purposes of the tax, the sum of $100,000 which Mrs. Belmont bequeathed to the National Woman's Party. The facts found by the Board, based on a stipulation of facts, were in substance as follows:

The petitioners are the executors of the estate of Alva E. Belmont, who died January 26, 1933, leaving a will in which she bequeathed $100,000 to the National Woman's Party in the following language:

"Third. I give and bequeath to National Woman's Party, a corporation organized and existing under and by virtue of the Laws of the District of Columbia, United States of America, the sum of one hundred thousand ($100,000) dollars."

The decedent was a leader in the movement for the establishment of women's rights and the elimination of legal, social, and economic restrictions which placed women in an inferior position. Her support of women's rights caused her to lend encouragement and aid to many movements for the improvement of the state of woman, and she was a leader in the movement which resulted in the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In October, 1900, with others who had worked with her on a national scale to secure its adoption, she became convinced that the franchise alone would not remove the existing legal and economic handicaps since the average woman was ignorant of their existence and effect. A great campaign for the instruction of women in such matters became the ideal of this group and the National Woman's Party was formed to conduct the campaign on a national scale. Mrs. Belmont became chairman of the party and served as such until her death.

The party was incorporated September 19, 1918, under chapter 18, subchapter 3, of the Code of Laws of the District of Columbia, D.C.Code 1929, T. 5, §§ 121-126, which provides:

"Any three or more persons of full age, citizens of the United States, a majority of whom shall be citizens of the District, who desire to associate themselves for benevolent, charitable, educational, literary, musical, scientific, religious, or missionary purposes, including societies formed for mutual improvement or for the promotion of the arts, may make, * * * and file in the office of the recorder of deeds, to be recorded by him, a certificate in writing. * * *

"Upon filing their certificates the persons who shall have signed and acknowledged the same and their associates and successors shall be a body politic and corporate."

The objects of the party as stated in the certificate of incorporation are as follows:

"The term for which the society is organized is perpetual.

"The particular business and objects of the society are educational and for mutual improvement and especially by the preparation and circulation of books, newspapers, the delivery of speeches, lectures and such other proper means as in the judgment of the society will promote that end, to educate public sentiment to a recognition of the equality of the sexes in all their rights, privileges and obligations."

The constitution and by-laws of the party, as organized and in effect in 1933, article 2, stated the object of the party to be as follows:

"The object of this organization shall be to secure for women complete equality with men under the law and in all human relationships."

Other matters were provided for in the by-laws which it is unnecessary to mention here.

Following the adoption of the Amendment to the Constitution in 1900 and in pursuance of article 2 of its constitution and by-laws, the party took upon itself "to work for the complete freedom of women in all lines." From 1922 to 1934 it "conducted a national campaign for the establishment of woman's rights and the elimination of hardships," it established a paper, which it has since maintained, in which were collected and published all the facts relating to the campaign. Members of the party conducted an exhaustive research and presented bibliographies of all books and literature relating to women's rights. This research included an examination of the statutes of each of the forty-eight states which restricted and...