Court Opinion

ID: 9653312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:43:35.158661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:57.719802
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I agree that Newman was to have the powers granted by Article Tenth although he should “resign or be otherwise unable to act”; and it is of course incredible that he should not also have them while he was trustee, in spite of the fact that some of the language does not literally fit that period: e.g., that upon occasion he was to give a written instrument to himself. I cannot believe, however, that the words, “alter or amend,” sandwiched in as they are between a power wholly, and a power partially, to revoke, allowed him to divert the income from his children to himself. The argument is, as I understand it, that the power to “alter or amend” was granted in order to give him control over them; and to that I answer that he already had the fullest possible control in the power to revoke, in whole or in part. Most significantly, any exercise of that power resulted in a re-verter to his wife. Besides, in view of the obvious affluence of the family, I cannot seriously suppose that she thought that a power to take away an income of some $400 a year would give him any perceptible added control. But suppose she did, how did it contribute to the result to let him keep the money for himself? Would it not indeed do more, if he were compelled to accumulate any sums denied to a child, as a bait for better subservience in the future?
Therefore, even if Newman had not been made trustee, and if the naked powers had -alone been given him, I should construe “alter or amend,” in what appears — to me at any rate — to be their more natural meaning: that is, as enabling him to accommodate the administration of the trust to possible changes in circumstances. But when we consider that he was to be trustee, and that he would probably continue to be the trustee while he lived, our reading becomes to my mind still more likely. Had he not been the father of the beneficiaries, I submit that we should all have agreed that such an equivocal phrase would not have allowed him for his own benefit to frustrate the main purpose. The fact that he was the beneficiaries’ father does indeed relieve this of its more acute improbability; nevertheless, it remains true that we are reading language which certainly does not imperatively demand such a result, so as to give to a trustee a power totally at variance with the most fundamental duty of every trustee; not to feather his own nest at the expense of bis charge. If that was the purpose, I submit it ought to have been more plainly put.
Finally, if I understand the Commissioner, he wishes us to consider that these deeds may have been a preliminary step in a reprehensible scheme to lessen the wife’s income taxes. There is not the faintest ground for imputing any such purpose to the parties at bar; and, if there were, it ought not to count. Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing *851sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere. cant.