Helvering v. Fuller

• Decision Date: 22 April 1940
• Docket Number: No. 427,427
• Citation: 60 S.Ct. 784,310 U.S. 69,84 L.Ed. 1082
• Parties: HELVERING, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, v. FULLER
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

310 U.S. 69

60 S.Ct. 784

84 L.Ed. 1082

HELVERING, Commissioner of Internal Revenue,

v FULLER.

No. 427.

Argued March 26, 1940.

Decided April 22, 1940.

Messrs. Robert H. Jackson, Atty. Gen., and Arnold Raum, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

[Argument of Counsel from page 70 intentionally omitted] Mr. Francis W. Cole, of Hartford, Conn., for respondent.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case raises the question of the circumstances under which income paid to the taxpayer's divorced wife under a trust, the provisions of which have been approved in the divorce decree, is taxable to him. We granted certiorari because of the asserted misapplication by the Circuit Court of Appeals of the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, 296 U.S. 1, 56 S.Ct. 59, 80 L.Ed. 3, 101 A.L.R. 391, to these facts. 309 U.S. 644, 60 S.Ct. 511, 84 L.Ed. -.

On July 25, 1930, respondent and his wife, residing in Connecticut, entered into an agreement in contemplation of divorce which provided, inter alia, for the creation by him of a trust of 60,380 shares of Class A common stock of the Fuller Brush Co. The trust was irrevocable and was to continue for ten years. During that period all trust income was to be used for the maintenance and support of the wife, or in case of her prior decease, then for the children; or in case of their prior decease, then for the heirs of the wife or as she should provide in her will. At the expiration of the ten-year period the trust property was to be transferred to her outright. The agreement provided for other property settlements, for control and custody of the children, and for waiver by respondent and his wife of all claims against each other arising out of the marital relation. It also contained an agreement on the part of respondent to pay the wife $40 per week for five years, and, if at the end of that period his annual net income exceeded by the amount of the weekly payments the sum of $60,000, to continue those weekly payments for an additional five years or for such portion thereof as his annual net income exceeded the above sum.

The wife repaired to Reno, Nevada, and obtained a divorce decree on November 12, 1930, which 'ordered, adjudged, and decreed that said agreement entered into between the plaintiff and the defendant on or about the twenty-fifth day of July, 1930, be and the same hereby is approved.' On December 22, 1930, respondent created the trust provided for in the agreement.¹ The corporate trustee thereunder received from the Fuller Brush Co. all the dividends and income from the trusteed shares during 1931, 1932 and 1933 and disbursed them all for the benefit of the divorced wife. On the failure of respondent to include those amounts in his tax returns for the years in question, the Commissioner assessed deficiencies. The decisions of the Board of Tax Appeals (37 B.T.A. 1333), sustaining the action of the Commissioner, were reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals. 2 Cir., 105 F.2d 903.

I. There can be no doubt but that respondent is taxable on the $40 weekly payment to the wife. That is a continuing personal obligation falling within the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, supraAs a result of which those payments are taxable to him, not to the wife. Gould v. Gould, 245 U.S. 151, 38 S.Ct. 53, 62 L.Ed. 211. But that fact does not make the income from the trust also taxable to him. Although the provisions for the weekly payments and for the trust agreement were embodied in the same separation agreement, they were not so interrelated or interdependent as to make the trust a security for the weekly payments. Functionally they were as independent of each other as were the other property settlements from either of them.

II. Petitioner does not challenge the conclusion of the Circuit Court of Appeals that, so far as the trust agreement is concerned, the Nevada court retained no power to alter or modify the divorce decree. It seems to be admitted that under Nevada law the wife's allowance once made is final, Sweeney v. Sweeney, 42 Nev. 431, 179 P. 638, unless the decree itself expressly reserves the power to modify it, Lewis v. Lewis, 53 Nev. 398, 2 P.2d 131, or unless the decree approves a settlement which in turn provides for a modification. Aseltine v. Second Judicial District Court, 57 Nev. 269, 62 P.2d 701. Here no such power was reserved in the decree or in the trust agreement approved by the decree. Nor did respondent underwrite the principal or income from the trust or any part thereof or make any commitments, contingent or otherwise, respecting them, beyond his promise to transfer the securities to a trustee. But petitioner argues that the rule of Douglas v. Willcuts, supra, should nonetheless apply since the decree recognized the husband's pre-existing duty to support and defined that duty as coextensive with what the parties had themselves arranged, and since the husband simply carved out future income from property which he then owned and devoted it in advance to the discharge of his obligation.

We take a different view. If respondent had not placed the shares of stock in trust but had transferred them outright to his wife as part of the property settlement, there seems to be no doubt that income subsequently accrued and paid thereon would be taxable to the wife, not to him. Under the present statutory scheme that case would be no different from one where any debtor, voluntarily or under the compulsion of a court decree, transfers securities, a farm, an office building, or the like, to his creditor in whole or partial payment of his debt. Certainly it could not be claimed that income thereafter accruing from the transferred property must be included in the debtor's income tax return. If the debtor retained no right or interest in and to the property, he would cease to be the owner for purposes of the federal revenue acts. See Helvering v. Clifford, 309 U.S. 331, 60 S.Ct. 554, 84 L.Ed. —-. To hold that a different result necessarily obtains where the transfer is made or the trust is created as part of a property settlement attendant on a divorce would be to hold that for purposes of the federal income tax the marital obligation of the husband to support his wife cannot be discharged. But whether or not it can be depends on state law. For other purposes, local law determines the status of the parties and their property after a decree dissolving the matrimonial bonds. See Barrett v. Failing, 111 U.S. 523, 4 S.Ct. 598, 28 L.Ed. 505. And while the federal income tax is to be given a uniform construction of national application, Congress frequently has made it dependent on state law. See Thomas v. Perkins, 301 U.S. 655, 659, 57 S.Ct. 911, 912, 81 L.Ed. 1324, and cases cited. In the instant situation, an inquiry into state law seems inescapable. For the provisions in the revenue acts² and regulations³ concerning the non-deductibility of 'family expenses' and of 'alimony' do not illuminate the problem beyond implying the necessity for an examination of local law to determine the marital status and the obligations which have survived a divorce. The Nevada cases tell us that under such a decree as was entered here the obligation to support was pro tanto discharged and ended. And the trust agreement contains no contractual undertaking by respondent, contingent or otherwise, for support of the wife. Hence we can only conclude that respondent's personal obligation is not a continuing one but has been discharged pro tanto. To hold that it was not would be to find substantial differences between this irrevocable trust and an outright transfer of the shares to the wife, where in terms of local divorce law we can see only attenuated ones. This is not to imply that Congress lacks authority to design a different statutory scheme applying uniform standards for the taxation of income of the socalled alimony trusts. A somewhat comparable statute taxing to the grantor income from a trust applied to the payment of premiums upon insurance policies on his life was upheld in Burnet v. Wells, 289 U.S. 670, 53 S.Ct. 761, 77 L.Ed. 1439. But the reach of Congressional power is one thing; an interpretation of a federal revenue act based on local divorce law, quite another.

For the reasons we have stated, it seems clear that local law and the trust have given the respondent pro tanto a full discharge from his duty to support his divorced wife and leave no continuing obligation, contingent or otherwise. Hence under Helvering v. Fitch, 309 U.S. 149, 60 S.Ct. 427, 84 L.Ed. —-, income to the wife from this trust is to be treated the same as income accruing from property after a debtor has transferred that property to his creditor in full satisfaction of his obligation.⁴

III. One other observation is pertinent. Though the divorce decree extinguishes the husband's pre-existing duty to support the wife, and though no provision of the trust agreement places such obligation on him, that agreement may nevertheless leave him with sufficient interest in or control over the trust as to make him the owner of the corpus for purposes of the federal income tax. Helvering v. Clifford, supra.

As we have seen, respondent did retain considerable control over the trusteed shares. But that was not the basis for the assessment of the deficiency by the Commissioner. It was not passed upon by the Board of Tax Appeals or the Circuit Court of Appeals. It was not included in the petition for certiorari among the errors to be urged or the reasons for granting the writ. Nor did petitioner brief or argue the point...