Court Opinion

ID: 9443791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:30:54.971017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:36.606843
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I altogether agree as to the first trust, for it seems fair to me to hold the taxpayers to their burden of proof to show that forty per cent of its income would not have been more than a reasonable allowance to the wife for her “support and maintenance.” As to the second trust, if we were to affirm the order, I think I should also agree that the taxpayers should have shown that the income from it, when added to forty per cent of the income from the first trust, was no more than a New York court would have allowed to the decedent’s wife for “support and maintenance.” But we are reversing the order and are sending the cause back to the Tax Court to recompute the tax; and I do not see what warrant we have for denying to the taxpayers the privilege of carrying the burden of so proving, if they can, now that it has become vital. The only reason for such a denial must be that they failed to do so before, when it turned out to be unnecessary; and that appears to me unduly severe.
The liability of a husband for the “support and maintenance” of his wife depends, certainly in cases of divorce, .upon his resources and the spouses’ customary mode of life.1 Only to that extent is he liable, and his liability measures the extent of the tax in the case at bar. It is a very fluid issue at best, and if the taxpayers wish to contest it, I would not foreclose them. I agree that in an action on the deed the husband’s letter could not be used to modify the obligation to devote the income of the second trust to the wife’s “support and maintenance”; but what he gave does not measure what the courts would allow her; and the letter would certainly be competent evidence of his opinion as to what was a suitable allowance. Moreover, I rather think that his opinion would be relevant in determining the amount of his legal liability for “support and maintenance,” though that is not so plain. In any event, I need not pass on that, for my view is not to prevail.

. Burr v. Burr, 7 Hill 207, 211; Forrest v. Forrest, 25 N.Y. 501, 515, 516.