Court Opinion

ID: 9641691
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:38:04.546019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.174926
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I agree with the majority opinion that as to the shares of stock in question, petitioner had the double intention of giving his children the benefit of owning them, and .of diminishing the taxes which would be paid upon their sale.
I do not agree with the majority opinion that he frustrated this intention as to diminishing the taxes by keeping it within his own power to order and control the *564sale. I think it obvious that the things he did and the intention he evidenced effected a complete gift to his children by constituting himself trustee for them. In this way he gave effect to both of his intentions. In this way he gave the beneficial ownership of the shares to the children, while keeping it within his power to sell the shares for them.
The majority opinion makes important a supposition which I think has no relevancy to what actually occurre'd. That if he had made the gift directly to his minor children by manual delivery to them, instead of by constituting himself their trustee, he would have frustrated his intent to sell the stock by depriving himself of the power to do so.
Five members of the Board could not see why the great pains he went to to make himself trustee for his children should not be given effect. I cannot. Two of those dissenting thought the opinion of the majority of the Board a straining to find the gift frustrated because the intention to make it was coupled with the desire, frankly testified to, to reduce the taxes which would be due upon the sales. All of those dissenting thought there was a consummated gift.
I think so too. The majority opinion of the court rejects as unproven what I think plainly established, that petitioner by constituting himself trustee for his children, made effective at once his purpose to give them the stock before sale, and to sell it for them. Too much is made in the majority opinion, I think, of the fact that in his informal pleadings before the Board and for review here, petitioner did not name himself trustee. He did not need to do so. His constituting himself trustee was no part of the ultimate fact of gift. It was merely evidence of what was done as one of the means to make the- giving effectual. It was essential to plead, and petitioner did plead, that he had made absolute gifts to his children. It was essential to prove, and he did prove, I think, that he did this. Krankel’s Ex’x v. Krankel, 104 Ky. 745, 47 S.W. 1084; Williamson v. Yager, 91 Ky. 282, 15 S.W. 660, 34 Am.St.Rep. 184.
I respectfully dissent.