- 13 - With this longstanding judicial precedent in mind, we are not persuaded by Decedent's estate's position in the instant case. We conclude that the congressional mandate embodied in section 2036(a) requires that the property in question be included in Decedent's gross estate. As observed by the Supreme Court in construing a predecessor of section 2036(a) in the context of transfers in trust: an estate tax cannot be avoided by any trust transfer except by a bona fide transfer in which the settlor, absolutely, unequivocally, irrevocably, and without possible reservations, parts with all of his title and all of his possession and all of his enjoyment of the transferred property. * * * [Commissioner v. Estate of Church, 335 U.S. 632, 645 (1949).] The Court has also stated that section 2036(a): taxes not merely those interests which are deemed to pass at death according to refined technicalities of the law of property. It also taxes inter vivos transfers that are too much akin to testamentary dispositions not to be subjected to the same excise. By bringing into the gross estate at his death that which the settlor gave contingently upon it, this Court fastened on the vital factor. It refused to subordinate the plain purposes of a modern fiscal measure to the wholly unrelated origins of the recondite learning of ancient property law. * * * [Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 112 (1940).] Accordingly, the amount of consideration which is necessary to remove property from a gross estate under the bona fide sale exception of section 2036(a) is not determined merely by reference to the common law definition of contractual consideration, Merrill v. Fahs, 324 U.S. 308 (1945);Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
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