APPEAL COURT HEARS ARGUMENT ON CASE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 78, 1 April 1931, Page 9

APPEAL COURT HEARS ARGUMENT ON CASE.

Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, April 1. The Court of Appeal continued the hearing of the case of Rhodes-Moor-house v. the Commissioner of Stamp Duties. The Solicitor-General, Mr Fair, continuing his argument in the Appeal Court, submitted that the estate vested in Captain Moorhouse on his mother’s death was rightly valued as estate in fee simple and that the amount of the assessment, having Regard to the expectation of the life of his mother at the time of Moorhouse’s death, was correct. The death duties were correctly levied upon the sum of £176,000, the proceeds of the sale of part of the original estate. The Rhodes Trust Act of 1901 authorised the sale only on condition that the proceeds should be held on the same trusts as the land, and did not give the trustees power to vary #he terms of the will and defeat the very objects of the testator. Mr Hadfield, for the appellant, in reply, contended that as the property had never passed into the possession of the deceased Moorhouse within the terms of the Death Duties Act such property was not part of the dutiable estate and its value to him was nil. Judgment was reserved.