Irvine v. Commissioner

46 B.T.A. 246, 1942 BTA LEXIS 886
CourtUnited States Board of Tax Appeals
DecidedFebruary 4, 1942
DocketDocket No. 104587.
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 46 B.T.A. 246 (Irvine v. Commissioner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Board of Tax Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Irvine v. Commissioner, 46 B.T.A. 246, 1942 BTA LEXIS 886 (bta 1942).

Opinion

[255]*255OPINION.

Trust Income Issue.

Keen :

The first issue for our consideration is whether the amount of $18,000 representing income of an antenuptial trust set up by petitioner for his second wife, which amount was paid to her by the trustee in the taxable year, is properly includible in petitioner’s taxable income.

Eespondent argues, first, that the income is taxable to the petitioner under the provisions of section 167 of the Revenue Act of 1936.2 Our findings of fact, supra, disclose that, although the petitioner did possess during the taxable year the power to revoke, alter, amend, or modify the trust agreement, nevertheless, this power was effective only if the wife, the sole beneficiary of the trust, joined with petitioner in the exercise of the power. We are not concerned with -any income in excess of $18,000 which may have been earned by the trust corpus in the taxable year, but merely with the $18,000 which the instrument made subject to the wife’s demand and which she, in fact, received during the taxable year. If section 167 is applicable, then it must be held that the $18,000, or some part of it, could have been distributed to or was held or accumulated for future distribution to the petitioner in the discretion of petitioner alone, or in conjunction with a person not having a substantial adverse interest. That petitioner alone could not revoke or amend the instrument we have found as a fact. The question, then, narrows down to whether the wife had a substantial adverse interest. If so, then section 167 is inapplicable, since her consent was necessary to any modification, alteration, or revocation of the instrument, without which none of the $18,000 could have been either distributed to or held for the petitioner. It is difficult to conceive how the wife’s [256]*256interest under the trust could be considered as not being a substantially adverse one. She relinquished all of her community rights as part of the quid fro quo for the execution of the trust instrument. If she consented to receive less in any year than the $18,000 made subject to her command by the instrument, she would be cutting off her principal source of income. It is possible to visualize a situation where a wife might be willing to turn over her life interest in a trust to her husband because she knows that under state law governing maintenance and support and dower rights she will have equivalent or greater rights enforceable against her husband and his property. Here, however, the trust instrument together with the agreement between petitioner and his wife, specifically provided that the trust income was to be in addition to necessary support, except for clothes allowance and pin money, and by the same instrument the wife relinquished her community property rights. Clearly, here the wife had an adverse interest. Consequently, section 167 is inapplicable. See Jane B. Shiverick, 37 B. T. A. 454, and cases therein cited; Commissioner v. Betts, 123 Fed. (2d) 534.

We are aware that in Altmaier v. Commissioner, 116 Fed. (2d) 162, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that under the facts presented therein the wife of the settlor was not a person having a substantial adverse interest. The court, in reaching this conclusion, relied upon the doctrine of “the normal consequences of family solidarity” which the court felt was the basis of the decision in Helvering v. Clifford, 309 U. S. 331, which we discuss at greater length infra.3 The facts in that case, however, differed substantially from those present here. There the husband and wife had been married for some time prior to the creation of the trusts involved and three children had been born to the union. The picture there presented was one of “family solidarity.” In the instant proceeding the trust was created before the marriage of the parties and as part of an antenuptial agreement entered into by a widow and widower of mature age, each of whom had a child or children by a former marriage. It can not be said with any sense of realism that there was such a family solidarity existing between the parties to this contract at the time it was executed and prior to their marriage as to have as one of its normal consequences at that time a unity of economic interests resulting in the beneficiary’s interests being identical rather than adverse to those of the settlor.

[257]*257Respondent’s nest argument is that the provisions of section 166 of the Revenue Act of 19364 cover the situation. For the reasons set out above, however, we judge this section to be inapplicable, also. The first supplementary agreement did give to the petitioner the option of revoking the supplementary agreement which, by its terms, added certain securities to the corpus of the trust. But this option was esercisable only if the Commissioner’s office asserted that the whole or any part of the addition to corpus was subject to the Federal gift tax. Thus there was a condition precedent to exercise of the option, a condition over which petitioner had no control. Since the Commissioner’s office did not assert a gift tax liability until after the taxable year, this option was never exercisable within the taxable year. And, as to the rest of the trust corpus, the consent of the wife was necessary to any revocation.

The next argument of respondent is based upon the rationale of Helvering v. Clifford, supra, and cases thereunder. As we have already indicated, we do not consider that doctrine herein applicable because of the great variance of the factual situation. Here the trust was not set up as a method of tax evasion. It is not a short term trust; nor is it gratuitous. Thé wife-to-be renounced her community interest by acceptance of the provisions of the trust. The petitioner, as settlor, although he could direct reinvestments and could, with his wife’s consent, substitute trustees, did not have at his command the use of the trust corpus. And this was not a “temporary reallocation of income within an intimate family group.” At the time this trust was created there was as yet no such “intimate family group” and the facts disclose that one of the reasons for setting up this trust was the fear that the subsequent family relations might not be intimate. It is apparent that the petitioner did not intend this diversion of income to be temporary; everything about the preliminary negotiations and the agreement itself points to permanency. The trust was created prior to marriage and was to last until the marriage was dissolved by death.

The fourth argument of respondent is that the trust income here in controversy was used to pay a legal obligation of the petitioner and is, therefore, taxable in its entirety to petitioner under the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, 296 U. S. 1. Neither that case nor any cases [258]*258subsequently decided on the same basis covers this situation, however, in the mamier urged by respondent. In most of that line of cases the settlors created the trusts to completely discharge continuing personal legal obligations to support, and the divorce courts approved and confirmed the trusts in their decree on that basis, subject to powers of modification.

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Related

Estate of George H. Wadleigh v. Commissioner
4 T.C.M. 664 (U.S. Tax Court, 1945)
Yankey v. Commissioner
3 T.C.M. 1231 (U.S. Tax Court, 1944)
Irvine v. Commissioner
46 B.T.A. 246 (Board of Tax Appeals, 1942)

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Bluebook (online)
46 B.T.A. 246, 1942 BTA LEXIS 886, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/irvine-v-commissioner-bta-1942.