Signing a Joint Tax Return May Put You In "The Joint"

On March 15, 2005, the Wall Street Journal published an article about how difficult it is for spouses and former spouses to get Innocent Spouse Relief from the IRS.

The IRS can collect the entire amount owed in taxes from either spouse when they have both signed a joint tax return. You can file an "innocent spouse" affidavit and make the defense that you did not know and had no reason to know that any under reporting of income or other wrongdoing associated with the filing of the tax return, and therefore you should not be responsible for paying any additional taxes, penalties or interest due.

However, the article reports that of the nearly 50,000 innocent spouse claims received by the IRS in 2005, only 21% were allowed in full and another 8% were partially allowed.

Therefore, before you sign a tax return that you have any doubt about, you should not sign it. This is especially true if you are thinking about a divorce or are in the process of divorce.

Something to Wine About

Almost 300 cases of the finest wine, and it evaporated like morning mist. Five-hundred-dollar bottles. Thousand-dollar bottles. The French Bordeaux from his children's birth years, which he planned to uncork at their weddings. The 1966 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild he wanted to share one day with his brother.

The only vintage that remained in his ransacked office, Doug Eisinger said, was a single bottle of 1990 Dom Perignon. "I plan on drinking that on the day of my divorce," he said.

Eisinger, who lives in Sherwood Forest in Anne Arundel County, Md., claims that his estranged wife, Elizabeth, absconded with his $200,000 wine collection in November, breaking into the office of his construction company where the wine was hidden, then loading about 3,500 bottles into a rental truck.

Elizabeth Eisinger's attorney says that she had her own key to the office, that she took much less wine and that she made nowhere near $200,000 upon selling it wholesale (and not through a ritzy Washington, D.C., auction house, as her husband contends).

Who gets to keep the money won't be sorted out until the divorce -- a particularly messy affair filled with charges and countercharges -- is settled, probably in the summer. Until then, all that both sides can agree on is that the wine is gone for good.

Custody disputes over huge, vastly expensive wine collections are bubbling up in a growing number of divorce cases across the country, lawyers say, as some Americans' cellars age better than their marriages.

"It's really been in the last decade," said Sheila Sachs, a Baltimore divorce lawyer who specializes in high-net-worth divorces. "People are spending a lot on wine. It's almost more of an asset of influence now than jewelry."

While these disputes often are settled amicably, they can also turn as vicious as bar brawls -- and not just because wine is difficult to appraise and evenly divide.

"People have an emotional relationship with their wine cellars," Sachs said.

Others manage to wait until after the divorce to savor vengeance. Cleaveland Miller, a Baltimore-area lawyer and part-owner of Calvert Fine Wines in Hunt Valley, knows of a woman who waited patiently for her half of her ex-husband's beloved 100-bottle stock, then poured every last drop down the sink.

Not every cellar custody battle tastes of the grapes of wrath. Some couples simply and dispassionately disagree about how to appraise a collection, said Sally Gold, another Baltimore attorney who has handled several wine-drenched divorces. Even though wine is literally a liquid asset, it's difficult to appraise and divide. Splitting a favorite case down the middle can diminish its market price, for instance, and it's hard to measure how some wines' worth will increase with time.

But, in mid-divorce at least, some bon vivants have little patience for legal niceties. The courts weren't quick enough to salvage much of Roger Yaseen's $500,000 Bordeaux collection, which the New York investment banker said his ex-wife "held hostage" in 2001 after he decided to remarry.

The hearings dragged on while the wine languished in what he claimed was the dangerous climate of his ex-wife's house.

"The wines were going through serious, serious problems," he said. "Inappropriate humidity conditions and everything."

Yaseen said that more than half of his hoard soured.

From the Delaware News Journal.

Dad's Rights, Mom's Rights, But What About The Kids?

An organization known as The National Center for Men has reportedly filed a questionable federal court lawsuit on behalf of a baby’s admitted biological father.

The theory behind the suit seems to be that: men are denied equal protection of the law, because the biological mother’s reproductive rights supersede the biological father’s reproductive rights.

Therefore, the organization’s argument apparently goes, it is unconstitutional to impose child support obligations on a father - unless the father wanted, planned or later accepted the child.

The reported facts of the case indicate that the father alleges that the mother told the father she was unable to conceive. The article did not indicate whether the mother knew the truth.

Interestingly, it does not appear from the article whether the father asserted the mother’s alleged fraud as a defense in the state court paternity case that imposed the child support obligation.

Arguably, doing so may have quietly put an end to this particular father’s cause.

Child Support Enforcement

What is child support enforcement depends on the underlying order which is being sought to be enforced. An obligee might be ordered to provide health insurance, and other financial benefits to the child. Therefore, the terms of the underlying order must be studies carefuly before begining with a child support enforcement proceding. If the complaintant says that child support has not been paid, then the payment history should be obtained. If the complaint is that uninsured medical has not been paid, then copies of all correspondence and copies of bills that were sent asking the obligor to pay should be obtained. If the obligee did not comply with the order for request of uninsured expenses, then a motion for contempt will not succeed. Once all of this information is gathered, the attorney should be able to adivse on the best course of action. Only when there is a strong case to be made that the obligor failed to meet his or her obligations, and that the obligee met all their own obligations, should a motion to enforce be filed. TFC 157.001.