Arnold Fuqua v. George D. Patterson, Jr., District Director of Internal Revenue

The sole question presented for decision is:

“Whether the District Court correctly held that under a 1949 Alabama decree of separate maintenance the taxpayer and his wife were not ‘legally separated’ within the meaning of Section 71(a) (1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, and that therefore the taxpayer-husband was not entitled to deduct under Section 215(a) of the Code maintenance payments which he made to his wife in 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1958 pursuant to the decree.”

That question was fully and, we think, correctly discussed and decided by the district court in an able opinion reported…