Court Opinion

ID: 9638038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:30:52.758566+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:02.947908
License: Public Domain

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The test of tax liability in these cases is stated in the case of United States v. Wells, 283 U.S. 102, 51 S.Ct. 446, 452, 75 L.Ed. 867, where the Chief Justice said: “If it is the thought of death, as a controlling motive prompting the disposition of property, that affords the test, .it follows that the statute does not embrace gifts inter vivos which spring from a different motive. Such transfers were made the subject of a distinct gift tax, since repealed.”
In the present case the testator had made gifts to his children which gave them an income commensurate with the status of living he desired for them. Thereafter he made a will by which the residue of his estate was bequeathed to them. With the depression the income of some of his children was depleted below this level. To provide for such depletion during his own life he made gifts to his children to restore their incomes to an ante-depression status. In doing so, to use the words of the Supreme Court, “the thought of death” was not the “controlling motive”, but the desire to counteract the national depression. *765These gifts made advisable some minor changes in his earlier will and a new will was made at the suggestion of the trust officer. Ilis gift to his children was not in contemplation of his death but to provide adequate income for them during his remaining years — a natural and laudable motive in a considerate parental heart.