Wade v. Helvering

Petitioner, an unmarried man now approaching sixty years of age, went to live with his second cousin and his Second counsin’s wife in their home in Washington City when he was a boy of seventeen. He was received as a member of the household and was treated by them as a son until some ten years later, when the cousin disappeared. Petitioner, at that time twenty-seven, regarding the deserted wife as his foster mother, then undertook the obligation of her maintenance, she being then and now wholly without means of support. For all of the intervening thirty years petitioner has maintained the…