Opinion ID: 183262
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Delivery

Text: [O]nly such delivery is required as the nature of the thing given and the circumstances under which it is given will permit, and so it is generally held the delivery may be manual, constructive or symbolic. . . . Whether what was done was sufficient to constitute a delivery depends on the nature of the property and the attendant circumstances. Marriage of Zier, 147 P.3d at 628. Unlike a precious gem or the keys to a vault, LLC interests do not lend themselves to manual delivery. Instead, they are delivered through the execution of papers. As a result, while one might distinguish the manual delivery of a gem from a prior or subsequent transfer of title to the gem, it is somewhat artificial to separate the delivery of an LLC interest from the intention to donate it. Cf. id. at 629 (delivery of corporation's stock effected, even where stock certificates were not manually delivered to donee); Henderson v. Tagg, 68 Wash.2d 188, 412 P.2d 112, 116 (1966) (same). We suspect, therefore, that the Washington law of gifts would collapse its analysis of the delivery element of an alleged gift of LLC interests into its analysis of the intent to donate. In the alternative, the element of delivery was at least present no later than the intent to donate. On January 22, 2003, the taxpayers signed two kinds of documents: one, the gift documents stating that each taxpayer hereby gifts to the [relevant] Trust . . . a total of 11.25 percentage interests in WLFB Investments, LLC, and another, the trust agreements, stating at the time of signing this Agreement, the Grantors have transferred percentage interests in the WLFB Investments, LLC. . . to the Trustee for the Trust. These documents were signed in the presence of the trustee, James Linton, the legal representative of the trust, to whom delivery to the trust would need to be made. On this alternative account, the element of delivery was present on January 22, 2003. It is true that the gift documents and trust agreements were left undated on January 22, 2003. Washington law might consider the blank space left for the date as creating ambiguity as to whether a delivery occurred on January 22, 2003, especially if it determined the delivery of an LLC interest by looking for an objective manifestation of an intent to deliver. If that were so, then, the inquiries into the delivery and the intent to donate elements of a gift would, as intimated at the outset, be one and the same here. Donation and delivery of an abstract equity interest are hard to distinguish, and, as we later explain, Washington law would also look to an objective manifestation of the intent to donate to determine that element of a gift. In any case, on either interpretation of what Washington law requires for delivery, that element of a gift was present no later than the element of intent to donate.