189 A. 289 | Pa. | 1936
Argued November 24, 1936.
At the audit of the executors' account, the Commonwealth presented a claim, described in the adjudication as "unpaid sales tax,"1 in the admitted sum of $82.70. The amount for distribution was not sufficient to pay decedent's debts in full. The Commonwealth contended that its claim was a "first lien upon the . . . property, both real and personal, of" decedent under Section 14012 of the Fiscal Code of 1929, P. L. 343,
The question is whether the Fiscal Code of 1929, by implication, repealed so much of section 13(a) of the Fiduciaries Act as stated the order of distribution of an insolvent decedent's estate and declared that debts due the Commonwealth "shall be last paid."
It is well settled that a statute will not repeal another by implication unless the two cannot stand together; the legislative intent to repeal must be clear: Com. v. ProvidentTrust Co.,
It is well known that our law of Decedents' Estates has developed from colonial times into a body of jurisprudence distinguished by characteristics generally recognized and administered by the Orphans' Court in the exercise of jurisdiction well established. From 1832 to 1834, pursuant to the recommendation of a commission appointed to revise and codify the law on the subject of Decedents' Estates (see resolution of Mar. 23, 1830, P. L. 408) five acts covering the subject were passed. During the next eighty years more than 200 amendments to these acts were adopted. In 1915 it was again considered desirable to have the whole subject re-examined, with the result that in 1917, on the recommendation of *38
the commission,3 the law of Decedents' Estates was reenacted and revised in a series of acts,4 among them, the Fiduciaries Act of which section 13(a) is now in question. It provides as follows: "Section 13. (a) All debts owing by any person within this State at the time of his decease shall be paid by his executors or administrators, so far as they have assets, in the manner and order following; namely, — One, funeral expenses, medicine furnished and medical attendance given during the last illness of the decedent, and servants' wages, not exceeding one year; two, rents, not exceeding one year; three, all other debts, without regard to the quality of the same, except debts due to the Commonwealth, which shall be last paid." The preferential order of payment (described in Wade's Appeal,
While this body of law on the subject of Decedents' Estates was growing, another quite distinctive system of law — that relating to taxation for state purposes — *39 was developing. The earliest statute on that subject to which we need refer was the Act of 1811,7 5 Sm. L. 228, section 12, providing: "That the amount or balance of every account settled agreeably to this act due to the Commonwealth, shall be deemed and adjudged to be a lien from the date of the settlement of such account on all the real estate of the person or persons indebted, and on his or their securities throughout this Commonwealth."
The provisions of that section remained in force (Schoyer v.Comet Oil Refining Co.,
The Act of 1811 had been found to be defective in not providing a method of giving notice of the lien; the omission was supplied by section 4 of an Act of April 14, 1827, 9 Sm. L. 433, providing for record of the lien: see Commonwealth'sAppeal,
"Section 15. That no corporation or limited partnership made taxable by this act shall hereafter be dissolved by the decree of any court of common pleas, until all taxes due the Commonwealth have been fully paid into the state treasury, and the certificate of the auditor general, state treasurer, and attorney general to this effect filed in the proper court, with the proceedings for dissolution."
The effect of this Act of 1879 on the prior Acts of 1811 and 1827 was considered in Wm. Wilson Son Silversmith Co.'sEstate,
Section 1402 deals with the sale by sheriff, receiver, trustee, assignee, master, or other officer of the property or franchises of any corporation, limited partnership, or joint-stock association; section 1403 with bulk sales or sales of real estate of corporations, joint-stock association, limited partnership or company. Section 1404 provides a method of obtaining a record lien and judgment on scire facias.
The argument of the Commonwealth is based on the words of Section 1401 providing that the Commonwealth shall have a first lien on the property of any person (cf. Section 12 of the Act of 1811); it is said that this indicates legislative intention, by implication, to repeal the provision in section 13 (a) of the Fiduciaries Act which provided that in distributing the assets of an insolvent decedent the Commonwealth should be last paid. The contention that there was an implied repeal must be rejected. Section 1802, P. L. 439,
The Commonwealth cited Metcalf's Estate,
It cannot be supposed, although this is what the Commonwealth's argument comes to, that in 1811, for example, the legislature intended by implication to modify the provision of the Act of 1794 governing the distribution of an insolvent decedent's estate, and subsequently, by the Decedents' Estate legislation of 1834, intended by implication to modify the taxing act of 1811 by restoring the provisions of the Act of 1794, and thereafter from time to time to repeat this conflict between the Taxing and the Decedents' Estates legislation in 1879, 1917 and 1929. If such radical departure from legislative policy had been intended by the Fiscal Code it would have been clearly indicated in the title as required by Article III, section 3, of the Constitution. While the title, abstractly considered, is very comprehensive, it must be *43 construed in the light of the established legislative policy of the state which, as to the Decedents' Estates legislation, was established long before the Constitution of 1874, and, since that time has been recognized as a well defined body of our law.
The decree is affirmed, costs to be paid out of the fund.