The Succession Duty Act 1853, section 2, enacts-‘Every past or future disposition of property by reason whereof any person has or shall become beneficially entitled to any property or the income thereof upon the death of any person dying after the time appointed for the commencement of this Act, either immediately or after an interval, either certainly or contingently, and either originally or by way of substitutive limitation, and every devolution by law of any beneficial interest in property or the income thereof, upon the death of any person dying after the time appointed for the commencement of this Act, to any other person in possession or expectancy, shall be deemed to have conferred or to confer on the person entitled by reason of any such disposition or devolution a succession; and the term ‘successor’ shall denote the person so entitled; and the term ‘predecessor’ shall denote the settlor, dis-poner, testator, obligor, ancestor, or other person from whom the interest of the successor is or shall be derived.’
A proprietor by entail settled his estate upon himself and the heirs of his body, whom failing upon his brother and the heirs-male of his body, ‘whom failing the heirs-female of the body of the said’ brother.
The succession having opened to an heir-female of the body of the brother after he and his heirs-male had successively held the estate, held that the heir-female took, for the purposes of the Succession Duty Act 1853, by disposition not by devolution by law, and that her predecessor was the settlor and not her father, the last heir-female of the brother.
Lord Advocate v. M’Culloch, 1895, 22 R. 356, 32 S.L.R. 266, approved.
The Finance (1909-10) Act 1910, section 58, increases succession duty in certain cases, ‘in the case of a succession arising under a disposition only if the first succession under the disposition arises on or after’ 30th April 1909. Held that ‘the first succession’ meant the first taking which involved liability for payment of duty under the Succession Duty Act.
Viscount Finlay, Viscount Haldane, Viscount Cave, Lord Dunedin, and Lord Shaw
[1919] UKHL 524, 56 SLR 524
Bailii
Scotland
Inheritance Tax
Updated: 10 January 2022; Ref: scu.632780
