Hundley v. Marsh

The question raised by this adversary proceeding in the bankruptcy court is whether a non-debtor spouse is entitled to a portion of a prepetition tax refund, where the parties filed a joint return and the non-debtor spouse earned no income for the tax year for which the return was filed. Because a debtor’s interest in property is defined by state law, Butner v. United States, 440 U.S. 48, 54-55, 99 S.Ct. 914, 59 L.Ed.2d 136 (1979), we look to the law of Massachusetts in order to determine the respective interests of spouses in their jointly-filed tax refund. The courts of the Commonwealth…