Four states and the United States claimed $37.7 million in death taxes from Hetty Green's son's $36 million estate

When Hetty Green died in 1916, her son Edward H. R. "Ned" Green and her daughter Sylvia each inherited half of a fortune estimated at $100 million to $200 million^†. Hetty had opposed his companion Mabel Harlow, a former prostitute. He married her on 10 July 1917. He ran the Texas-Midland Railroad until 1928 and chaired the Texas Republican executive committee from 1896 to 1902. He bought a sheet of Inverted Jenny stamps for $20,000 in 1918 and paid for MIT's Van de Graaff generator in an airship hangar on his Round Hill estate in Massachusetts^†. He died of heart disease at Lake Placid on 8 June 1936. His widow and sister fought over the estate. Texas, Florida, New York and Massachusetts each claimed he had lived there. A Supreme Court special master found a net estate of $36,137,335. If every claim stood, the United States would take $17,520,987, New York $5,910,301, Massachusetts $4,947,008, Texas $4,685,057 and Florida $4,663,857. That totals $37,727,213, more than the estate. Texas sued the other states in the Supreme Court. On 13 March 1939 the Court held that it could hear the case because the estate could not pay every claim, and found Green domiciled in Massachusetts. Justices Frankfurter and Black dissented. Sylvia died childless and left her money to charities.