Brown v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, Docket No. 9146.
| Decision Date | 10 September 1946 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 9146. |
| Citation | 7 T.C. 715 |
| Parties | CHARLES L. BROWN, PETITIONER, v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, RESPONDENT. |
| Court | U.S. Tax Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Maintenance payments made by petitioner to his wife under a separation agreement not entered into incident to a judicial separation, held, not deductible under Internal Revenue Code, section 23(u). Joseph W. Price, III, Esq., for the petitioner.
Karl W. Windhorst, Esq., for the respondent.
A deficiency of $1,123.19 in income tax for the calendar year 1943 is placed in issue by these proceedings. All of the facts are submitted by way of stipulation or joint exhibits. They are hereby found accordingly. Petitioner filed his income tax return for the year in question with the collector at Philadelphia.
The question involved is a narrow one, but apparently novel. Petitioner is obligated under a voluntary separation agreement with his wife to make monthly payments to her for her support. The sole issue is whether petitioner is entitled under Internal Revenue Code, section 23(u),1 ad added by Revenue Act of 1942, section 120, to deduct the payments made in 1943, there having been no court decree of divorce or separation.
The parties agree that petitioner's rights under section 23(u) are dependent upon the wife's obligation under section 22(k). That section reads in part as follows:
(k) ALIMONY, ETC., INCOME.— In the case of a wife who is divorced or legally separated from her husband under a decree of divorce or of separate maintenance, periodic payments (whether or not made at regular intervals) received subsequent to such decree in discharge of, or attributable to property transferred (in trust or otherwise) in discharge of, a legal obligation which, because husband under such decree or under a written instrument incident to such divorce or separation shall be includible in the gross income of such wife, and such amounts received as are attributable to property so transferred shall not be includible in the gross income of such husband.
From a scrutiny of this language it will be apparent that the legislators took occasion in that single sentence to require at no less than three distinct points the intervention of some sort of judicial sanction for an alteration in the marital status.2 The wife must be ‘divorced or legally separated from her husband under a decree of divorce or of separate maintenance.‘ The payments in question must have been ‘received subsequent to such decree.‘ And they must discharge an obligation ‘under such decree or under a written instrument incident to such divorce or separation.‘ Even in the last quotation use of the word ‘such‘ to define ‘separation‘ demonstrates that what was meant was not any legal separation, as petitioner contends, but only one of a sort to which reference has already been made in the prior language, that is, a separation consummated ‘under a decree * * *...
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Tressler v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
...with the construction given these sections of the statute by the Tax Court since their enactment by Congress in 1942. Brown v. Commissioner, 7 T.C. 715; Wick v. Commissioner, 7 T.C. 723, affirmed, 3 Cir., 161 F.2d 732; Kalchthaler v. Commissioner, 7 T.C. 625; Daine v. Commissioner, 9 T.C. 4......
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...of a decree of divorce or separate maintenance to make the payments taxable to the wife and deductible by the husband. Charles L. Brown, 7 T.C. 715 (1946); Estate of Daniel Buckley, 37 T.C. 664 (1962); Smith v. Commissioner, 168 F.2d 446 (C.A. 2, 1948), affirming a Memorandum Opinion of thi......
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Dauwalter v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
...such prior language, it is clear to us that Congress referred to the decree of divorce and not to a continuing status. See Charles L. Brown, 7 T.C. 715, 716. The term ‘divorce‘ in ordinary parlance refers to an alteration or severance or dissolution of the marital relationship or tie by a c......
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Wondsel v. Commissioner, Docket No. 3414-62.
...the necessity to look to State law for a determination of the presence or absence of such judicial sanction. Cf. Charles L. Brown Dec. 15,369, 7 T. C. 715 (1946). ...