Estate under administration: right to insurance proceeds was excluded from legatee's net wealth and assessed separately.

A person administering a deceased's estate under a will may be treated as an executrix by implication where the will and surrounding circumstances show estate administration, even without formal appointment as administrator. On that basis, the right to receive life insurance proceeds forming part of the estate was not includible in the assessee's own net wealth while administration remained incomplete, because the asset was separately assessable under section 19A of the Wealth-tax Act. The exclusion from the assessee's wealth was therefore upheld until complete distribution of the estate was established.

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Issues: Whether the assessee, as nominee and person administering the deceased's estate under the will, was liable to include the right to receive life insurance proceeds in her net wealth, or whether the amount was separately assessable under section 19A of the Wealth-tax Act.

Analysis: The definition of executor and administrator under the Indian Succession Act showed that an administrator must be appointed by competent authority, which was absent here, while an executor may also arise by implication from the terms of the will. Reading the will as a whole, together with the assessee's management of the estate and the manner in which the parties treated her in the partition arrangement, the assessee could be regarded as an executrix by implication and, at the least, as a person administering the estate within the extended meaning of section 19A. The right to receive the insurance amount therefore did not fall to be included as the assessee's own asset in the relevant valuation dates, because the estate was still under administration and complete distribution had not been shown before the compromise with the insurer.

Conclusion: The right to receive the insurance proceeds was not includible in the assessee's hands as legatee for the assessment years in question and was separately dealt with under section 19A.

Final Conclusion: The revenue's appeals failed, and the exclusion of the disputed amount from the assessee's net wealth was upheld.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the terms of a will and the surrounding circumstances show that a person is administering the deceased's estate, the estate's assets, including a disputed right to receive money, are assessable under section 19A and are not to be brought to tax as the legatee's own wealth until complete distribution is established.

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