Sandage

Unless either the decedent or federal law otherwise directs, both federal and California estate tax “shall be equitably prorated among the persons interested in the estate” in the manner prescribed in Probate Code sections 20110 through 20117. (Prob. Code, § 20110.) We are called upon to review the construction and application of Probate Code section 20113, which states that “[i]f a trust is created, or other provision made whereby a person is given an interest in the income of, an estate for years or for life in, or other temporary interest in, any property, the estate tax on both the temporary interest and on the remainder thereafter shall be charged against and paid out of the corpus of the property without apportionment between remainders and temporary estates."

By a will which contained no specific direction for proration of estate taxes, a decedent gave a life estate in a house to a 68-year-old friend and permitted the remainder to fall, with other assets, into an estate residue to be *1904 held in trust for certain of her relatives. It was the decedent’s apparent intention that her friend should live in the house for the rest of his life and that the house should…