Court Opinion

ID: 6248114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-02-17 21:05:58.591107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:59:20.973926
License: Public Domain

Mb. Chief Justice Mitchell,
dissenting:
I would reverse this judgment. The taxation of land not within the territorial limits of the state is admittedly beyond the legislative power, and the taxation of the value or the proceeds of such land, under whatever form or disguise it is sought to be exercised, is upon the border line of questionable jurisdiction and should be scrutinized closely with every presumption against its validity.
*324But even if the lands in this case were within Pennsjdvania there was no proper conversion. They were devised as land to devisees named, and there is in the will no direction to sell but only a power and discretion to do so when the executors should deem it expedient. The learned court below founded its judgment on the doctrine of necessity to carry out the will. But on this point the case falls clearly within the principle of Hunt’s Appeal, 105 Pa. 128 (141), where it was held, “the most that can be said is that the testator made a mistake as to the extent of his estate, and a sale of his real estate became necessary in order to pay his debts. But this is not to the purpose. The scheme oE his will did not contemplate this, and if by reason of the depreciation of his property, or for other causes a necessity to sell the real estate arose which was not foreseen by the testator, it will not work a conversion for the obvious reason that a conversion is always a question of intent.”
The necessity to sell which effects a conversion is one which must have been contemplated by the testator in order to carry out the scheme of his will, not a necessity as a matter of fact arising out of the actual circumstances of the estate after his death. Suppose the personalty though insufficient to pay the pecuniary legacies at the time of testator’s death had so increased in value as to be sufficient before the time of payment, clearly there would have been no conversion which would require or justify an exertion of the executor’s discretion which would subject these devisees’ land to the payment of this tax; and equally so in the contrary case of a sufficiency of personalty at the death and a subsequent decline in value. Either case would come exactly within the quotation above made from Hunt’s Appeal. To attribute the necessity to sell as within the contemplation of the testator seems to me like attributing the gift of foresight to those who are wise after the event. The testator gave large pecuniary legacies, but he had personal estate of still larger nominal value, and .with this knowledge of his affairs he gave his executors not a direction but only a discretion to sell. Clearly he did not contemplate a sale as a necessity but only as a contingency to be dealt with in the discretion of his executors.
I regard the present decision as at variance with the princi*325pies of all our later decisions, particularly Hunt’s Appeal, supra; Handley’s Estate, 181 Pa. 339; Yerkes v Yerkes, 200 Pa. 419; Sauerbier’s Est., 202 Pa. 187; and Cooper’s Est., 206 Pa. 628.