Abstract.We shall say that a solvable Lie algebra L is a minimal nonnilpotent Lie algebra if L is nonnilpotent but all proper subalgebras of L are nilpotent. It is shown here that if L is a minimal nonnilpotent Lie algebra, then L is the vector space direct sum of A and F where A is an ideal in L, F is a one-dimensional subalgebra of L, either A is a minimal ideal of L or the center of A coincides with the derived algebra, A', of A and in either case facts irreducibly on A/A'. P. Hall and G. Higman have shown in [5] that a nonnilpotent finite group G all of whose proper subgroups are nilpotent can be considered as the product of subgroups P and Q where P is cyclic of prime power order, pa, Q is an invariant g-subgroup of G, q^p, 4>(P) ^Z(G) and Q is either elementary abelian or (Q) = Z(Q) = [Q, Q] where in either case P acts irreducibly on Q/(Q). We shall find a result on solvable Lie algebras which is roughly analogous to this result.Let L be a finite-dimensional solvable Lie algebra and let M be a self-normalizing maximal subalgebra of L. The maximal ideal of L contained in M will be called the core of M. The intersection of all maximal subalgebras of L will be denoted by