Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/287/224.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 15:34:36+00:00

Document:
Messrs. Thomas A. Thacher, of San Francisco, Cal., Llewellyn A. Luce, of Washington, D.C., Ralph W. Smith, of Los Angeles, Cal., and R. W. Davis, for petitioner. [287 U.S. 224, 225] Mr. G. A.Youngquist, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.
June --, 1915, J. H. Gwinn, the petitioner here, and his mother, Mrs. M. A. Gwinn, residents of California, acquired by equal contributions certain property, as joint tenants with the right of survivorship, which they continued to hold until her death, October 5, 1924. He is the beneficiary of the estate and in possession of its assets.
When he appraised the gross estate of Mrs. Gwinn for taxation under the act of 1924, the Commissioner of In- [287 U.S. 224, 226] ternal Revenue included the value of one-half the property which she and her son had acquired as stated. This was challenged as error. The Board of Tax Appeals upheld the Commissioner and the Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed its order.
That the word 'before' in subdivision (h), section 302, supra, should be construed as referring only to the period between June 2, 1924, and September 8, 1916, when the first of recent federal estate tax statutes ( 39 Stat. 777) became effective.
The clear language of the 1924 statute repels the notion that it has no application to joint tenancies created prior to September 8, 1916. Nichols v. Coolidge, 274 U.S. 531 , 47 S.Ct. 710, 52 A.L.R. 1081. The contrary view is not aided (as claimed) by Phillips v. Dime Trust & Safe Deposit Co., 284 U.S. 160 , 52 S.Ct. 46.
Although the property here involved was held under a joint tenancy with the right of survivorship created by the 1915 transfer, the rights of the possible survivor were not then irrevocably fixed since under the state laws the joint estate might have been terminated through voluntary conveyance by either party, through proceedings for partition, by an involuntary alienation under an execution. Col. Code Civ. Procedure, 752; Green v. Skinner, 185 Cal. 435, 197 P. 60; Hilborn v. Soale, 44 Cal.App. 115, 185 P. 982. The right to effect these changes in the estate was not terminated until the cotenant's death. Cessation of this power after enactment of the [287 U.S. 224, 229] Revenue Act of 1924 presented proper occasion for imposition of the tax. The death became the generating source of definite assessions to the survivor's property rights. Tyler v. United States, supra. See Saltonstall v. Saltonstall, 276 U.S. 260 , 48 S.Ct. 225; Chase National Bank v. United States, 278 U.S. 327 , 49 S.Ct. 126, 63 A.L.R. 388; Reinecke v. Northern Trust Co., 278 U.S. 339 , 49 S.Ct. 123, 66 A.L.R. 397.
Nichols v. Coolidge, 274 U.S. 531 , 47 S.Ct. 710, 52 A. L.R. 1081; Untermyer v. Anderson, 276 U.S. 440 , 48 S.Ct. 353; and Coolidge v. Long, 282 U.S. 582 , 51 S.Ct. 306, are inapplicable. In them the rights of the survivors became finally and definitely fixed before the passage of the act-nothing was added as the result of death.

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