Estate of Margrave v. Commissioner

HENLEY, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decision of the United States Tax Court involving the difficult question whether the proceeds of an insurance policy on the life of the decedent, owned by decedent’s wife but payable to The United States National Bank of Omaha as trustee of decedent’s revocable inter vivos trust, are includible in the decedent’s gross estate for estate tax purposes. The Tax Court, in a well reasoned opinion, held that the proceeds are not taxable to the estate of the decedent because he possessed no “incidents of ownership” with respect to the policy and…