Owen J. Roberts

“ Each, let it be assumed, provides for a life estate, with power to the life tenant to appoint the remainder, and with a gift over to children in default of an appointment. The life tenants die in 1921. If an assessment is made upon the right of succession under the will of later date, there will be no difficulty in collecting the tax, economically and swiftly, out of the estate of the donor. The power having been created after 1907, the executors will be under a duty to retain so much of the estate as may be necessary to pay the tax in full. ”

“ Remaindermen become liable for the tax not at the death of the donor but when they come into possession and enjoyment of the property at the expiration of a life estate or term of years. The tax on their succession is then payable by any fiduciary who then holds the property, and, if none is in office, by the beneficiaries themselves. ”

“ Instead of assigning any reason for the discrimination the statement merely points out that two classes are created, those who are taxed and those who are not, and since all who are taxed are treated alike and all who are exempt are treated alike the statute is uniform in operation upon each class ”

“ Cunningham (then Hetty Sullivan Lawrence) conveyed property in trust reserving a life estate in the income but no power to revoke, alter or amend. The income was to be paid for twenty years after her death 'to and among such of' her children as 'may be living at the time of payment,' living issue of a deceased child to take by right of representation. If, at her death, or at any time during the twenty years thereafter, no child or issue of hers should be living the trustees were to transfer the principal to the heirs of her father, if he were then dead ”

“ The appellants urge that, in imposing a succession tax, the state should disregard technical rules relating to the vesting of interests and look to the substance and they insist that for many years prior to 1907 those who were to take in succession to the intestate were ascertained, subject only to the contingency that, as in Coolidge v. Long, some of them might fall out of the class by death. ”

“ Whenever any person shall exercise a power of appointment, derived from any disposition of property made prior to September first, nineteen hundred and seven, such appointment when made shall be deemed a disposition of property by the person exercising such power, taxable under section one, in the same manner as though the property to which such appointment relates belonged absolutely to the donee of such power, and had been bequeathed or devised by the donee by will ”