Estate of Lafayette Montgomery, Deceased v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

Consideration of the issues raised on this appeal requires that we apply the “any form of contract or agreement” standard of Section 2039 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, Title 26, U.S.C., Section 2039, to an effort through use of a sophisticated device to utilize a claimed loophole in the federal estate tax statutes and thereby considerably reduce estate tax liability. We determine that the United States Tax Court was correct in finding that the device employed changed the form and not the substance of the transaction in question, in upholding the deficiency assessed by the Commissioner…