16 Pa. 63 | Pa. | 1851
The opinion of the court was delivered by
That Mr. Short’s property out of the State subjected him to personal liability for taxes assessed on it here in his lifetime, is not to be doubted. The general rule is that the situs of personal property follows the domicile of the owner of it, insomuch that even a creditor cannot reach it in a foreign country except by attachment or some other process provided by the local law; certainly not by a personal action without an appearance or .something equivalent to it. But personal property may, for particular purposes, have an actual situs distinct from its legal one. At the death of the owner, however, he ceases to have a domicile, and all the incidents of it are at an end, except the title to the succession. Eor all besides, the title to the assets abroad devolves on a local administrator, whose business it becomes to collect them, sell them, and having satisfied the demand against them by creditors or the State, to remit the surplus of the proceeds to the executor or administrator at the place of the domicile, for distribution among the unpaid creditors and the next of kin. All this was shown on principle and authority, in Mothland v. Wireman, 3 Pa.Rep. 185, and in the case of Miller’s Estate, 3 Rawle 312. The legislature acted on the principle of those cases in the act of 1826, by subjecting nothing to the collateral inheritance tax but property actually within the bounds of the States described as “passing from any person who may die seized or possessed of such estate, being within this commonwealth.” The position taken for the next of kin, in Smith v. The Commonwealth, was that the concluding words related to the person of the owner, and not to the property. But they are naturally referable to the subjéct of which the legislature was speaking, which was the thing to be taxed, and not to the person of the owner of it, which was beyond the legislative power. -Any other interpreta
Decree of the Register’s Court affirmed.