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immediately precedes “transfer under a trust”. In Simpson, for
instance, the appeals court reasoned that because the exercise of
a general power of appointment was made possible by the trust,
and the transfer was “under” the trust, the generation-skipping
transfer effected by the power’s exercise qualified under the
transitional rule. Simpson v. United States, supra at 814;
accord Bachler v. United States, supra. Under this construction,
however, the modifying language “generation-skipping” has no
significant effect. Inasmuch as neither the GST tax nor the
transitional rule has any application to any type of transfer
other than a generation-skipping transfer, the modifying language
“generation-skipping” is unnecessary and superfluous if it serves
merely to label the type of transfer eligible for transitional
relief. Yet, under the reading adopted by Simpson and Bachler,
the language appears to serve no other function.
To have significant purpose and effect, the modifying
language “generation-skipping” is properly construed, I believe,
as limiting transitional relief to a generation-skipping transfer
that is pursuant to the terms of the trust agreement; i.e., to a
transfer that is, just as the statute says, “a generation-
skipping transfer under a trust”. A generation-skipping transfer
that results from the power holder’s exercise of a general power
of appointment under a trust agreement is not a “generation-
skipping transfer under a trust” within the meaning of the
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