- 20 -
involving a claim against an estate, that court followed the
reasoning and holding of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit and provided the following explanation:
in Estate of Smith, the date of death value was not
established when the Fifth Circuit chose to follow
Ithaca Trust and disregard post-death events. The date
of death value was unknown. The amount claimed by Ms.
Smith’s estate to be the date of death value was only
the litigation demand amount being made by Exxon at her
date of death. It was therefore necessary for the
Fifth Circuit to request a recalculation upon remand.
We face a similar situation here. We conclude
that the Section 2053(a)(3) deduction should be the
value at Mrs. O’Neal’s date of death. We still,
however, do not know what that value is. As in Estate
of Smith, it is not necessarily the amount of the
demand being made by the government at Mrs. O’Neal’s
death. Like the Fifth Circuit, we must remand this
case to the district court for a recalculation of the
deduction.
* * *
* * * we find that no case holds that the value at the
date of death is the demand amount, $9,407,226, being
made here by the government at the date of death. We
therefore vacate the opinion of the district court on
this issue and remand for evidentiary hearing on
valuation. [Id. at 1275; citations omitted.]
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit concluded by
providing valuation instructions on remand nearly identical to
those provided by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Id.
In the instant case, the estate’s argument that it is
entitled to deduct the full amount of Exxon’s claim was rejected
by the Court of Appeals when it remanded the case for a
determination of the fair market value of Exxon’s claim as of
Page: Previous 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 NextLast modified: May 25, 2011