Court Opinion

ID: 4497973
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2020-01-23 18:15:42.323972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:05.669341
License: Public Domain

SteRNHagen,
dissenting: I do not think that this Board is universally bound by a decree of a state court without regard for the circumstances in which it is rendered. The record in this proceeding does not prove that there was a substantial controversy in which the mother or her estate was unsuccessful in establishing that when she died she owned the International shares and in which the children established against opposition that she had but a life estate. On the contrary it proves that the state court decree was the sanction of a mutually satisfactory agreement in which no one — the administrator ad litem, the creditors, the heirs and legatees, or anyone else — was adversely interested. Whether that was an arrangement deliberately aimed at the Federal Government’s tax interest in the decedent’s estate, it is not possible to say; but that still leaves it less than an adversary proceeding resulting in a judicial decree immune to Federal question. Generally I think my brother Opper has correctly analyzed the state court proceedings and shown the fallacy of recognizing the decree as binding here.