Taxpayer asks:
Hello,
I am writing in behalf of my daughter who has a stimulus check from last year that she cant get cashed. She and her husband or soon to be ex have received a $900.00 check that she cant get cashed. He isn’t playing fair and has moved out of the state and is refusing to sign the check or even give her the correct address. I had her mail the check off to him with a stern and direct note attached that he is to sign and send it back uncashed and she would send him his part on return. She sent it off signature required and it was returned as unknown address or person. The address she sent it to was the last known address the divorce attorney used to contact him. What can she do? Their boys are the ones suffering the most by not being able to cash this check…. any ideas?
Taxgirl says:
That stinks. But unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot that you can do. By law, each of your daughter and her ex is considered to receive half of the stimulus payment.
The IRS doesn’t want to play referee in a relationship. If the check is made out to both of you, the job of the IRS is more or less over. This doesn’t sound like an issue that would lend itself to innocent spouse relief, it’s an issue of endorsing the check. That really makes it more of an asset/income split issue for the divorce.
Since you indicated that there’s a divorce attorney involved, I would suggest contacting him or her to have the court order him to sign the check. That may be tricky because of the location issue.
Other than that, I have no real suggestions (perhaps one of my colleagues might?). Your daughter has already filed the return together with her ex, so she can’t amend to file separately without his consent. And that’s clearly not going to happen.
What I would definitely advise against: signing his name to the check (don’t, don’t, don’t!) or otherwise trying to cash it without his permission. That constitutes fraud and/or theft and would make a bad situation worse.
It just sounds like a terrible situation. Sorry that I can’t be of more help.
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Tough situation — she’s obviously not dealing with a genius, since by refusing to sign the check, he’s also saying good-bye to his own $450! Go figure….
This si awful this women needs her money she has the kids not him they need food clothing shelter medicine you name it get the bumb to sign it or talk to your congressman about fixing the law to avoid having him sign it.
@dollslikeus
“talk to your congressman about fixing the law to avoid having him sign it.”
There are bigger implications to this statement (if you could even get your congressman to listen to you nevertheless propose a bill and then have 50 Senators and 535 congressmen listen to the bill) – think about should we really only require one signature made out to 2 people?
Its bad policy.
Does your daughter still have a joint account with her husband that has not been closed yet? If so, then she could write “For deposit only” then cash it through her banking account.
Perhaps the check may be sent to the Service with a direction / request that it be applied against current year income taxes. If so, the person could (carefully!) Adjust witholdings to gain access to the cash benefit (of her share of the proceeds of the check). A contact to the taxpayer advocate may be wise in setting this up.
A. You have an error in this: Other than that, I have no real suggestions (perhaps one of my colleagues might?). Your daughter has already filed the return together with her ex, so she can’t amend to file separately without his consent. And that’s clearly not going to happen.
They can’t change to a MFS tax return after the due date of the return no matter what. However, this leads me to my suggestion.
Refuse to sign any actual divorce papers until after the end of the year. Since it is clear there are children involved and since the children live with the mother and since this is written before July 1st, she qualifies as head of household and he will be forced to file as MFS. And since the children live with her, and since the refunable portion of child tax credit is now based on just $3000 worth of income, it appears she will have a very nice tax refund.
And she can remind the scoundrel that when he won’t get to claim the children as dependents at all, he can just remember this situation. If her income is where it appears in this letter, she should probably be telling her employer to immediately initiate the advance earned income credit. She can also assure that no income taxes are being withheld from her paycheck for income tax purposes.
Jeff Day EA
Evansville, IN
This is a civil matter between her and her husband. The IRS cannot help her. She needs to litigate this out in the final divorce, and she needs to do it before the check expires. If it’s not cashed within one year, it is cancelled. If it is an actual Stimulus check, by law the IRS cannot reissue another one. They would have to claim the $900 as the Recovery Rebate Credit on their 2008 return. Good luck to her.