Sullivan's Estate v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
175 F.2d 657 · 1949
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 2 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently December 1999 · most notably First National Bank v. Energy Fuels Corp. (1980), Estate of Young v. Commissioner (1998)
14 federal appellate · 2 district · 6 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 811
Relies on Gregory v. Helvering · Fernandez v. Wiener · United States v. Jacobs · Moffitt v. Kelly · McDonald v. Morley
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The applicable statute * * * provides that there shall be included in the gross estate of the decedent the value at the time of his death of all property "to the extent of any interest therein of which the decedent has at any time made a transfer, by trust or otherwise, in contemplation of * * * his death. * * *” The thing taxed is the transmission of property from the dead to the living. For the purposes of the tax, property transferred by the decedent in contemplation of death is in the same category as it would have been if the transfer had not been made and the transferred property had continued to be owned by the decedent up to the time of his death. * * *”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“(t)here was no compulsion on the co-tenants to continue the joint tenancy so that (a) taxable event would occur.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“It has long been established that what constitutes an interest in property held by a person within a state is a matter of state law. Fernandez v. Wiener, 326 U. S. 340, 355-357 , 66 S. Ct. 178 , 90 L. Ed. 116 , determining by Louisiana law what is transferred of community property on the death of the husband and the shiftings of interest between the two spouses. Moffitt v. Kelly, 218 U. S. 400 , 31 S. Ct. 79 , 54 L. Ed. 1086 , 30 L. R. A., N. S., 1179. One of the factors in an owner’s interest in property is the owner’s power to transfer it. Congress has the power to impose an excise tax on the transfer when made, but has not enacted any law taxing gifts which determines the quantum of the transfer and thereby makes the state law not controlling. Under the law of California, one joint tenant cannot dispose of anything more than his own interest in the jointly held property. People v. Marshall, S Cal. 51; Oberwise v. Poulos, 124 Cal. App. 247 , 12 P. 2d 156 . “During the lives of the tenants, the rules, regula ting the transfer of their interests are substantially the same, whether they hold in joint tenancy or in common. Neither a joint tenant nor a tenant in common can do any act to the prejudice of his co-tenants in their estate.” Stark v. Barrett, 15 Cal. 361, 368 . Where a joint tenant has purported to convey more than his interest, his transferee is held to have taken only the interest that could be transferred, i. e., the transferor’s share. Stark v. Barrett, supra; Swa”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.