Santiago Rivera v. Tax Court of Puerto Rico

69 P.R. 282
CourtSupreme Court of Puerto Rico
DecidedNovember 3, 1948
DocketNo. 108
StatusPublished

This text of 69 P.R. 282 (Santiago Rivera v. Tax Court of Puerto Rico) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Santiago Rivera v. Tax Court of Puerto Rico, 69 P.R. 282 (prsupreme 1948).

Opinion

Mr. Acting Chief Justice De Jesús

delivered the opinion of the Court.

ON RECONSIDERATION1

The petitioner and Cecilia Emanuelli contracted marriage in Coamo, Puerto Rico on April 25, 1908 under the system of conjugal partnership. Both brought separate property. On December 4, 1943 she died in her domicile in New York, under an open will of January 9, 1941, amended by a codicil of November 7 of the same year. Both documents were executed in that city. The testatrix made several specific legacies and having no ascendants or descendants she instituted the petitioner as her sole and universal 'heir.

On April 13, 1944 the petitioner filed in the Treasury Department of Puerto Rico the death certificate of his wife in order to liquidate and pay the inheritance tax. Together with the certificate he filed a report of all their property, separate as well as conjugal. He stated that the total value ■of the property amounted to $409,641.07;2 that out of this amount, $117,727.03 3 belonged separately to the petitioner; that $54,398.05 was the value of the paraphernal property; that the debts of the conjugal partnership amounted to .$7,457.80.4

The Treasurer accepted the amount fixed by the petitioner as the value of the paraphernal property; but he did not accept, in whole nor in part, the amount he claimed as his separate property and notified him that the inheritance tax amounted to $30,474.58 out of which $13,635.41 should [285]*285be paid by eight legatees and $16,839.17 by the petitioner. Feeling aggrieved by this decision petitioner sought the reconsideration thereof and an administrative hearing which was held on April 17, 1945. The Treasurer ratified his previous decision. Thereupon the petitioner paid that part of' the tax pertaining to the legatees and as to his own he paid $9,730.13, which was, in his opinion, what he was bound to pay. As to the other $7,109.04 he appealed to the Tax Court. He alleged that no inheritance tax could be imposed on the following property because it belonged exclusively to him: (a) his paternal inheritance; (6) the money he invested in the partnership Santiago Hermanos; (c) the proportionate-part of his benefit in said partnership; (d) the inheritance which he received from his brother Florencio Santiago Rivera and (e) that received from his sister Teresa Santiago Rivera. All of this separate property, in his opinion, mounted up to $111,794.08.

The Tax Court rendered a decision on July 19, 1946 as follows: (a) upholding the appraisal made by the Treasurer of the real property inherited situated within the jurisdiction of Coamo, Ponce and Santa Isabel, which appraisal was accepted by the petitioner; (5) granting the complaint as to the amount of $32,392.52 which the petitioner received from the United States Government as compensation for the condemnation of the farm “El Húcar”; (c) dismissing the claim for the money invested in the partnership Santiago Herma-nos; (d) granting the amount of $9,623.33 out of the $14,378.40 claimed for cattle, and. denying the complaint as regard the $35,093.21 accruing from the inheritance of petitioner’s father; (e) dismissing petitioner’s claim to the effect that $33,949.03 from the whole estate classified by the Treasurer as conjugal, were, at the death of his wife, the separate property of the petitioner; and (/) granting the claim as to the inheritance from his sister Teresa only in the amount of $1,407.14.

Pursuant to this decision the Treasurer filed the compu[286]*286tation of the amount of the inheritance tax that petitioner-had to pay, that is, $4,656.62 in addition to the $9,730.13. which he had voluntarily paid before appealing to the Tax Court of Puerto Rico. On September 16, 1946 he paid under-protest the $4,656.62 and two days later he filed the petition for certiorari now before us.

Petitioner contends that since he brought to his marriage separate property amounting to $111,794.08, this amount should, after deducting the debts, be subtracted from the inventoried capital inasmuch as it is not subject to the inheritance tax; that the Tax Court also erred in requiring him to identify among all the property inventoried those' which he brought or were substituted in their place.

It is evident that § 1307 of the Civil Code which provides that all the property of the marriage shall be considered as community property until it is proven that it belongs exclusively to the husband or to the wife, is the-cornerstone of all lawsuits where the separate or conjugal character of the property is in issue. In the present case,, however, we cannot avail ourselves of this presumption simply because, as the legal maxim says, presumption yields to. the truth, that is, to the proof, and the documentary evidence-presented by the petitioner, as we shall presently see, shows that the capital which he claims as separate, emanates from the inheritance of his father and of his brother and sister, Florencio and Teresa, and from the money invested by him in the Santiago Hermanos partnership, plus a share 5 in the-profits yielded by said partnership before he contracted marriage. He further proved that all this property was brought by him to the marriage and that its total value is $111,794.08. It was shown that the property was of a separate character because, as to the property obtained by inher[287]*287itance, its .acquisition was established beyond any doubt by the deeds of partition;' and as to the part accruing from the-Santiago Hermanos partnership, by the. deed of dissolution of the partnership where reference is made to the articles of partnership. The presumption of § 1307 does not prevail herein because § 1299 excludes it, inasmuch as with respect to the capital and profits of the partnership existing-before the mariage, said § 1299 provides in its first paragraph that the separate property of the spouses are those-“brought to the marriage as his or her own;” and as to those accruing from inheritances, it provides in its second paragraph that separate property are those “acquired by either of them during the marriage by lucrative title, that is to say, by gift, legacy or descent.”

The lower court does not question that this property, by the way in which it was acquired, belongs exclusively to the petitioner. The difficulty lies in requiring him, after thirty years of marriage, to identify among the shares and the personal property existing at the time of the dissolution of' the marriage that which had been acquired with the proceeds of the property which he brought to the marriage, and that which he later acquired by descent. This identification is not necessary. To this effect Manresa says in his Comentariosal Código Civil Español:

“Section 1396 [equivalent to Section 1299 of the Civil Code, 1930 ed.] does not add any other case of subrogation; but, undoubtedly there are other cases comprised in the spirit, if not in the letter, of the law, such as:

“(a) The money paid for credits owned exclusively by one of the spouses.
“(b) Sale of the separate property of one of them.
“(c) Compensation paid in case of condemnation.
“In all these cases, the right or the thing is substituted by its value, price or compensation,

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69 P.R. 282, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/santiago-rivera-v-tax-court-of-puerto-rico-prsupreme-1948.