This original suit, in the nature of a bill of interpleader, brought to determine the true domicile of decedent as the basis of rival claims of four states for death taxes upon his estate, raises two principal questions: Whether this Court has jurisdiction of the cause and, if so, whether the report of the Special Master, finding that decedent at the time of his death was domiciled in Massachusetts, should be confirmed.
On March 15, 1937, this Court granted the motion of the State of Texas for leave to file its bill of complaint against the States of Florida and New York and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and against decedent's wife, Mabel Harlow Green, and his sister, Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks, both alleged to be residents of New York. The bill of complaint alleges that Edward H. R. Green died at Lake Placid, New York, on June 8, 1936, leaving surviving him his wife and sister as his only heir and next of kin; that he left a gross estate of approximately $44,348,500, and a net estate valued at $42,348,500, comprising real estate and tangible personal property located in Taxas, New York, Florida and Massachusetts, of an aggregate value of approximately $6,500,000, and intangible personal property consisting principally of stocks, bonds and securities, the paper evidences of most of which were located in New York.
The bill of complaint alleges that decedent, at the time of his death, was domiciled in Texas, but that Florida, New York, and Massachusetts each asserts, through its taxing officials, that decedent was at the time of his death domiciled within it. It alleges in detail that Texas and each of the defendant states maintains and enforces a system of taxation upon the inheritance or succession of the estates of decedents domiciled within the state at death, under which laws real estate and tangible personal property located within the state and all intangibles, regardless of their situs, are subjected to the tax; that each of the four states asserts and proposes to exercise the right to tax the estate of decedent on the assumption that decedent was domiciled within it at the time of his death; and that certain judicial proceedings have been instituted in each of the four states for the administration of decedent's estate or some parts of it. It is further alleged that none of the four states and no officer or representative of any state, except as already noted, has become a party to any of those proceedings, and that no state or its officer or representative will appear or become a party to any such proceedings instituted in any other state to fix or assess death taxes on decedent's estate, and that no judgment in any such proceeding will be binding on any state not a party to it; that each of the four states claims a lien for taxes and the right to collect a tax, based on decedent's alleged domicile within it, upon the tangibles located in the state and upon all decedent's intangibles wherever located, the total of such claims amounting to a sum far greater than the net value of the estate; that the amount of decedent's property located in Texas is negligible in amount and insufficient to pay its tax; and in the event that the states should obtain adjudications in their own or other courts in pending proceedings, or others instituted for the purpose of collecting the tax on the ground that decedent was domiciled elsewhere than in Texas, Texas would be deprived of its lawful tax. The bill prays that the Court determine whether decedent's domicile, for purposes of taxation, was in either of the defendant states and that particularly it determine and adjudicate that his domicile was in Texas and that it alone has the right to assess and collect death taxes on decedent's intangibles.