In re Estate of Schnepp

This case reaches us as an appeal by the tax commission from an order of the trial court overruling its objections to the discharge of the executors of the will of Florence Schnepp. The commission claimed there was a deficiency in the payment of inheritance tax. The one question to be determined is whether the inheritance tax on a contingent remainder paid before the contingencies are resolved should be determined by the order of passing under the provisions of the will or by the probable order of passing calculated mathematically under standard mortality tables. [1] Testatrix' will created a trust under which her surviving spouse, age 52, was to receive the income for life. Her three brothers, all of whom were older (57, 64, 67) than the spouse, were each to receive a portion of the corpus of the trust if they survived him. The share of any brother who failed to survive the spouse was bequeathed to specified nieces and nephews. We have referred only to the portions of the will directly involved in the question presented here. The executors made a final inheritance tax return in which they computed and paid the inheritance tax, including that on the deferred contingent estates, in accordance with the option provided by the pertinent sections of chapter 450, Code of Iowa. The tax was computed at the rate