Court Opinion

ID: 9750283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:46:19.811986+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:06.555188
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Bell:
It would often be very advantageous for the people of Pennsylvania if a court had the right to rewrite wills and statutes and to dispense equity and justice in each case. However, ■ that is not and never has been the province or privilege of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
The majority opinion ignores the language of the taxing statute and the long and well recognized legal entity “estate by entireties” in order to arrive at a more equitable result in this particular case.
An “estate by the entireties” has been recognized for over a century as “a distinct legal entity, ... a venerable institution of the common law; it rests upon instincts which form the very warp and woof of our domestic and social fabric”: C.I.T. Corporation v. Flint, 333 Pa. 350, 354-5, 5 A. 2d 126; “Its essential characteristic is that each spouse is seized per tout et non per my i. e. of the whole or the entirety and not of a share, moiety, or divisible part”: Gallagher Estate, 352 Pa. 476, 478, 43 A. 2d 132.
Tax acts sometimes contain provisions which are inequitable, unjust, illogical and irritating. The fact that this construction will produce inequity in the in*626stant case is no justification for ignoring the language of the Act or nullifying our prior decisions with respect to “tenancies by tbe entireties”.
This bequest — not being to a person or persons who are designated as subject to a 2% tax — clearly and necessarily falls within the provision of the Act that subjects all other testamentary gifts to taxation at the 10% rate; and hence at said rate it must be taxed.