Thomas v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

100 F.2d 408, 121 A.L.R. 469, 22 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 117, 1938 U.S. App. LEXIS 2668
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedDecember 5, 1938
Docket75
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 100 F.2d 408 (Thomas v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Thomas v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 100 F.2d 408, 121 A.L.R. 469, 22 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 117, 1938 U.S. App. LEXIS 2668 (2d Cir. 1938).

Opinions

AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judge.

The Board of Tax Appeals determined a deficiency in the income tax of the peti- • tioner Elisabeth R. Thomas for the year 1930 amounting to $21,183.54, the correctness of which is disputed by her on the present appeal.

The taxpayer married Edward R. Thomas on November 5, 1912, and their, son and only child was born on October 2, 1913. On May 8, 1924, the couple having already separated, entered into a con- • tract for the settlement of property rights; and claims arising out of the marital reía- - tion. This was followed by a decree of divorce rendered on June 27, 1924, by the Circuit Court of Florida, where the parties were domiciled. The decree of divorce awarded- to the taxpayer the custody of her son.

In the contract of May 8, 1924, the taxpayer relinquished all her rights of dower, inheritance and descent in the property of her husband, renounced any right to administer his estate, released all claims for future maintenance and support, and assumed liability for the support of the child. The husband on his part agreed to pay his wife various amounts in cash, to convey to her certain real estate and to create a trust fund of $200,000 on her behalf. In addition to these undertakings which ■ were to be performed at once, he also agreed (a) to pay -the taxpayer specified sums annually during their joint lives; (b) to create within five years (that is, by May 8, 1929) an additional trust fund of $100,-000; (c) to charge his estate with a loan of $93,400 on certain insurance policies on his own life of the face amount of $425,000; payable to her, and to pay premiums upon such policies when due; (d) to assign toiler his interest to the extent of $300,000 in the remainder of an estate created by his father’s will, such $300,000 to become [409]*409payable upon the death of the life tenant, who was Ann Augusta Thomas, his mother, on condition, however, that the taxpayer should not have remarried; (e) to create upon the mother’s death a trust fund of $200,000, the income of which should be paid to the taxpayer for life or until remarriage; (f) to guarantee performance by the Morning Telegraph Company of its contract with the taxpayer whereby she was to receive $10,400 annually for fifteen years for writing articles.

The husband died on July 6, 1926. At the time of his death he had fully performed all the obligations of the separation agreement which had become due. There remained unperformed: (1) The creation of the $100,000 trust by May 8, 1929, (2) the repayment by his estate of the $93,400 loan upon the life insurance policies; (3) the creation of a $200,000 trust upon his mother’s death; (4) the payment of $300,000 to the taxpayer out of his father’s estate after the death of his mother.

In addition, the taxpayer had not received payment from the Morning Telegraph Company for her articles since September 27, 1926.

A compromise agreement was executed in 1930 by the taxpayer, by the second wife of Edward R. Thomas, by the executors of his will and by the trustee named in the contract of May 8, 1924. Under this agreement the $100,000 tnxst was created for the taxpayer; the $93,400 loan on the insurance policies, together with interest, was paid in full, and the executors agreed to establish the $200,000 trust upon the death of the mother, and $125,000 in cash plus interest of $12,304.17 were paid directly to her in consideration of her release of her rights under the separation agreement.

During the year 1930 the taxpayer received $8,552.88 as her distributable share of the income from the trust of $200,000 created in 1924, and likewise $6,858.73 from the trust of $100,000 set up in 1930. The returns of the taxpayer were on a cash basis, but she railed to report either of these two receipts of income in her tax returns, regarding them as only payments in exchange for her relinquishment of personal rights growing out of the marital status. The Commissioner assessed them against her for that year. From the income returned for 1930 she claimed a bad debt deduction of $232,322.67 on the theory that the various obligations under the separation agreement of May 8, 1924, were debts and that the deduction was allowable since the unperformed obligations valued as of a given date exceeded the aggregate of the items in the compromise agreement as then valued. The Commissioner rejected the deduction. His rulings against the taxpayer in assessing both items of income derived from the trusts and in rejecting the bad debt deduction she had claimed were sustained by the Board of Tax Appeals.

The questions presented on this appeal are: (1) Whether the income from the trusts, paid over to the taxpayer in 1930, was properly taxable against her, and (2) whether she was entitled to a bad debt deduction as a result of the settlement of the obligations which her husband had entered into under the separation agreement of May 8, 1924, and not fulfilled prior to his death.

The question whether the income from the trusts was taxable against the taxpayer or her husband’s estate is not on its face a simple one. It would have been taxable against the husband during his lifetime, even though a part of the consideration was in lieu of the dower rights or statutory interests in his estate to which she would be entitled upon his death. Douglas v. Willcuts, 296 U.S. 1, 56 S.Ct. 59, 80 L.Ed. 3, 101 A.L.R. 391. Hughes, C. J., there said (at page 8, 56 S.Ct. at page 62) : “However designated, it was a provision for annual payments to serve the purpose of alimony, that is, to assure to the wife suitable support. The fact that the provision was to be in lieu of any other interest in the husband’s property did not affect the essential quality of these payments.”

There is, however, authority for holding that the wife is liable for the tax after the legal obligations of the husband to support her in settlement of which a trust was created, had ceased. In Commissioner v. Harry S. Blumenthal, 2 Cir., 91 F.2d 1009, affirming 34 B.T.A. 994, per curiam, we held that the income of a trust set up for support and maintenance of a divorced wife was taxable to her upon her remarriage. In Robert Glendinning v. Commissioner, 36 B.T.A. 486, affirmed in 3 Cir., 97 F.2d 51, the opposite result was reached. In neither of the last two cases cited were the courts confronted with the difficulty that exists here of apportioning the consideration between the wife’s right to support and her statutory rights in her husband’s [410]*410property; nor were they confronted with the administrative difficulty of taxing his estate after he had died.

In Helvering v. Brooks, 2 Cir., 82 F.2d 173, where a trust settlement had been made in exchange both for relinquishment of the divorced wife’s right to support and for her statutory rights in her husband’s property, we held that the husband alone was subject to the tax, saying: “Whether the trust income is used to discharge the husband’s duty, made specific by ágreement, to support the wife, or to discharge an obligation to pay her agreed sums for a release of rights in his property, pannot be material in determining the taxability of the husband.” The same result was reached by the Supreme Court under similar circumstances in Douglas v.

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Adriance v. Higgins
30 F. Supp. 70 (S.D. New York, 1939)
Thomas v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
100 F.2d 408 (Second Circuit, 1938)

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Bluebook (online)
100 F.2d 408, 121 A.L.R. 469, 22 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 117, 1938 U.S. App. LEXIS 2668, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/thomas-v-commissioner-of-internal-revenue-ca2-1938.