- Revision 14
- 27 appendices
- ISBN: 1-58012-073-3

Take the Work Out of Divorce Tax Planning

Whether you are structuring agreements, advising clients, negotiating with adversaries, or presenting to the court, it is important to have a clear understanding of the tax consequences. However, lack of funds or time to hire a tax expert sometimes leaves you wandering alone through this complicated area. Now there’s a roadmap.

Melvyn B. Frumkes, a national expert who teaches the subject to judges, lawyers and accountants, has written a concise lawyer’s guide to divorce taxes. This plain English manual walks you step-by-step through the most commonly arising trouble spots in property distribution, support, and more. This answer book is intelligently organized and indexed, well-supported with citations, and most important, loaded with practical advice. Divorce Taxation will help you sidestep problems in these areas:

• Property aspects of dissolution
• Alimony and separate maintenance payments
• Temporary support payments
• Child support
• The dependency exemption and child tax credit
• Medical expenses for dependents
• Deductibility of attorney’s fees
• The kiddie tax
• Joint returns
• Innocent spouse election and equitable relief
• Retirement benefits, QDROs and IRAs
• Stock options

Complicated rules can slow down your progress as you work your way through the taxation pitfalls and opportunities that abound in divorces. Frumkes on Divorce Taxation quickly guides you through trouble spots and alerts you to potential tax savings in property distribution, support, and more. It offers on-target explanations, examples, specimen clauses, forms, checklists, tables, and other practical planning tools—all designed to reduce the work in divorce tax planning. This problem-solving book is loaded with how-to gems like:

• How to structure make-up alimony payments to side-step income recapture. Section 3.9.2.2
• How to transfer an IRA tax-free. Section 14.8
• How to avoid non-deductible child support treatment. Section 3.8.2
• How to qualify alimony as taxable and deductible. Section 3.5
• How to bypass tax on interest payments. Section 2.4.2
• How to enforce the record requirements of property transfers. Section 2.1.4
• How to shift the dependency exemption and the child tax credit to the non-custodial parent. Section 5.1.5
• How to deduct a portion of the attorney’s fees. Section 7.5

The book includes appendices with proposed orders and forms, clauses to achieve Lester results, and the Temporary Regulations which are still in force.

Introduction
Chapter 1: Preliminary Issues
Chapter 2: Property Aspects: Distribution of Assets and Liabilities
Chapter 3: Alimony/Separate Maintenance Payments
Chapter 4: Pendente Lite (Temporary) Support
Chapter 5: Child-Related Exemptions, Credits and Deductions
Chapter 6 [Reserved]
Chapter 7: Deductibility of Attorneys’ Fees
Chapter 8: The Kiddie Tax
Chapter 9: Tax Returns: Joint,Married Filing Separately, Head of Household
Chapter 10: Assignment of Income Doctrine, Applicability in Divorce
Chapter 11: Innocent Spouse Relief (and Separation of Liability and Equitable Relief)
Chapter 12: Tax Problems of “Live-in” Relationships
Chapter 13: Qualified Retirement Benefits
Chapter 14: Municipal Pensions
Chapter 15: Individual Retirement Accounts, Tax Implications
Appendices
Table of Cases
Index to Internal Revenue Code Sections
Index to Treasury Regulations
Index to Revenue Rulings
Index to Private Letter Ruling Citations
Index to Internal Revenue Service Chief Counsel’s Advisory
Index to Proposed Regulations
Index

View expanded table of contents.

James Publishing is saddened to report that author Melvyn B. Frumkes passed away in 2014. Mr. Frumkes wrote the first edition of Divorce Taxation and every annual update through 2013.

During his long and successful career, Mr. Frumkes practiced marital and family law, with a special emphasis on complex asset and custody cases. He graduated, with honors, from the University of Florida, College of Law. He served on the faculty of the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada for 18 years, where he taught Divorce Taxation. Mr. Frumkes was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 1990 and served as a member of the Consultative Group to its project to develop Principles on the Law of Family Dissolution. He was Board Certified in Marital and Family Law by The Florida Bar, and was a Diplomate of the American College of Family Trial Lawyers, and a Fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.