Blog

On the PBI “Family Law Update” satellite broadcast yesterday, I said that I would post the citations to the cases that were not included in the written materials. Here they are: Koehler, 2005 WL 4312126 (Northamp.2005) Johnson, 2006 WL 2589787 (9/11/2006) Johanson v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2006-115 Kean v. Commissioner, 407 F.3d 186 (3d Cir.2005) Salesky v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2006-162 I appreciate all of the good feedback that we […]

From the TaxProf Blog: Shari Motro (Richmond) has published A New “I Do”: Towards a Marriage-Neutral Income Tax, 91 Iowa L. Rev. 1509 (2006). Here is the abstract: The federal income tax system treats married couples as if each spouse earned approximately one-half of the couple’s combined income through a mechanism called “income splitting.” For many one-earner and unequal-earner couples, income splitting produces a significant advantage, a “marriage bonus,” by […]

One of the long-standing principles of evidence is the rule that restricts the courts from hearing the testimony of legal experts as witnesses who can explain the law. The reason for the rule is that judges are expected to form their own opinions of the law and how it applies to a case. That rule once made sense, in the days when most judges heard cases ranging from admiralty to […]

The National Litigation Consultants’ Review this month contains a terrific article about depreciation addbacks in the context of income calculations for child support. Since the goal of a child support calculation is to allocate available cash flow (rather than taxable income) between the child’s parents, business depreciation expenses are usually added back to the net income. Depreciation expense is also added back when normalization is performed on the income statement of […]

In Haentjens, a 2004 decision of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the husband inherited a minority interest in a family business around the mid-point of his 20 year marriage. The family business was subequently sold prior to the parties’ separation. In the equitable distribution proceeding, the wife’s expert measured the increase in value of the husband’s non-marital business interest by subtracting the discounted value of the husband’s minority interest at the […]

A New York court dismissed a wife’s attempt to invalidate a divorce settlement which was reached while the business owner was simultaneously negotiating the sale of the company. From the Family Law Prof Blog: Wife argued that husband affirmatively misrepresented the liquidity of the company and the talks that were underway for purchase of the company. However, the court disagreed, finding that husband had disclosed the assets and that it […]