Federal Tax Research 10th Edition by Steven Gill, Gerald Whittenburg, Roby Sawyers, Debra Sanders, William Raabe

Exercise 55

Your client, Jack Benny, and his wife were divorced last year. Jack had been employed by the city of Rancho Cucamonga for 30 years. Jack was a participant in a defined-benefit pension plan. He had been eligible to start receiving pension benefits five years ago, but he kept working and did not collect his pension. The divorce decree gave Jack's wife one-half of the community interest in the pension plan. If Jack had retired on the date of the divorce, she would have been entitled to receive $2,200 per month. Because Jack did not retire, however, the divorce court ordered him to pay his former spouse $2,200 per month until he retired. The divorce court also ordered the pension plan to make the same monthly payments to Jack's ex-wife after his retirement. Jack paid his former spouse $26,400 in the current year as ordered in the divorce decree. Jack is still working and has not yet retired.
After appropriate research to determine if Jack can deduct the payments to his ex-wife as alimony on his current tax return and prepare (in good form) a research memorandum to the file. Write a client letter to Jack with your findings. His address is 543 Camino Disolución, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730.