Tom C. Clark

“ Regardless of the tags, Delaware seems only to place a burden on the husband's property rather than to make the wife a part owner thereof. In the present context the rights of succession and reasonable share do not differ significantly from the husband's obligations of support and alimony. They all partake more of a personal liability of the husband than a property interest of the wife. ”

“ In the instant case the 'property received' was the release of the wife's inchoate marital rights. The Court of Claims, following the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, found that there was no way to compute the fair market value of these marital rights and that it was thus impossible to determine the taxable gain realized by the taxpayer. We believe this conclusion was erroneous.
It must be assumed, we think, that the parties acted at arm's length and that they judged the marital rights to be equal in value to the property for which they were exchanged. ”

“ Property transferred pursuant to a negotiated settlement in return for the release of admittedly valuable rights is not a gift in any sense of the term. To intimate that there was a gift to the extent the value of the property exceeded that of the rights released not only invokes the erroneous premise that every exchange not precisely equal involves a gift but merely raises the measurement problem discussed in Part III, infra, 370 U.S., p. ”

“ The attorney-fee question is much simpler. It is the customary practice in Delaware for the husband to pay both his own and his wife's legal expenses incurred in the divorce and the property settlement. ”

“ What is 'reasonable' might be ascertained independently of the extent of the husband's property by such criteria as the wife's financial condition, her needs in relation to her accustomed station in life, her age and health, the number of children and their ages, and the earning capacity of the husband. ”

“ To be sure Congress has seen fit to alleviate this disparity in many areas, e.g., Revenue Act of 1948, 62 Stat. 110, but in other areas the facts of life are still with us.
Our interpretation of the general statutory language is fortified by the long-standing administrative practice as sounded and formalized by the settled state of law in the lower courts. ”

“ Commissioner, 160 F.2d 812 (C.A.2d Cir. 1947) .↑ Under the present administrative practice, the release of marital rights in exchange from property or other consideration is not considered a taxable event as to the wife. For a discussion of the difficulties confronting a wife under a contrary approach, see Taylor and Schwartz, Tax Aspects of Marital Property Agreements, 7 Tax L.Rev. 19, 30 (1951) ; Comment, The Lump Sum Divorce Settlement as a Taxable Exchange, 8 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. ”