Tax Court: Michael J. Morley, III, Executor of Estate of Linda A. Cerritelli v. Director, Division of Taxation, Docket No. 007443-2020; opinion by Sundar, P.J.T.C., decided June 7, 2021. For plaintiff - Francis P. Maneri, Kristen L. Behrens, and Sarah Gremminger (Dilworth Paxson, LLP, attorney); for defendant - Heather Lynn Anderson (Gurbir S. Grewal, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney).
Held: Amounts to be included in the decedent’s gross estate for purposes of New Jersey’s Estate Tax are the sums actually recovered under a survival claim action as provided under the New Jersey Transfer Inheritance Tax laws. The State’s estate tax and inheritance tax statutes can and should be read in pari materia because both laws address the same subject: the corpus or the estate of a decedent, and because assets includible in the estate for estate tax purposes are those which are transferred to a beneficiary for inheritance tax purposes. Therefore, the legislative intent to include the sums actually recovered under a survival claim action in a decedent’s estate for inheritance tax purposes also extends to their inclusion in the decedent’s estate for estate tax purposes. The recovered amounts are deemed to be the value of the survival claim action as of the decedent’s date of death.