If you are currently going through or are considering a divorce, you may be wondering if you are required to file your tax return jointly with your spouse. Generally, the Internal Revenue Code provides married couples with a choice to file either jointly or separately. In many situations, filing a joint return can be beneficial and reduce a couple's overall tax debt. However, filing jointly also comes with burdens. A joint return can expose a spouse to liability for fraudulent or misrepresentations made on the return even if that spouse did not sign the return. Unsurprisingly, this combination of benefits and burdens can and has led to tension and disagreement between divorcing couples. So, what happens when one spouse wants to file a return jointly, but the other spouse disagrees? Under New Jersey law, a court may compel the unwilling spouse to file jointly.
Question for 2020: Will I File Joint Income Tax Returns with My Spouse If I Am Getting a Divorce in 2019?
When Business Owners Divorce, Who Gets Paid?
If money was a person, how would you describe your relationship? Is friendly, or marked with tension and anxiety? In family law, we deal with that connection constantly, as we discuss alimony, child support, equitable distribution of assets and debts. Every family has its own method of managing assets, debts, expenses. When spouses divorce, it frequently comes to light that they had dramatically different ideas about money. Money might have caused strife, even if there was plenty to go around. Discussions about dividing assets and debts, and making appropriate arrangements for the support of the whole family, forces husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, to consider how they have acquired, spent and saved their money, and how they think they should be entitled to spend or save it in the future.
When your family needs privacy, go to arbitration instead of going to Court
Amanda S. Trigg is trained by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers as a Family Law Arbitrator.
Tax reform adds complexity to spousal support
Under the current system, a person paying alimony deducts his or her alimony payment thereby receiving a, sometimes substantial, tax break. The alimony recipient then has to report his or her receipt of alimony as income on their tax returns and therefore pay taxes on that amount at his or her, typically, lower tax bracket.
Provisions to include and exclude with your premarital agreement
The number of issues that can be involved in a divorce are myriad, and the divorcing spouses will bring their own varying personalities and traits to the table during the process. This means every divorce is unique, and though some matters are common among many divorces, it is unlikely that any one divorce will play out in the same way as another divorce.
Awarded alimony? Prepare to track the payments
There are many different issues involved in divorce. And although every case is unique, the number of issues that must be discussed will be myriad in every one. How will property division be handled? Are children involved? What are the custody, parenting time and support parameters? Did the spouses sign a prenuptial agreement before they walked down the aisle?
