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the weekly payments to property settlement and 80 percent to
alimony.5
3. The Nature of the Payments
In deciding the character of an award in a divorce or
separation decree, great weight is given to the language and
structure of the decree. Griffith v. Commissioner, 749 F.2d 11,
13 (6th Cir. 1984), affg. T.C. Memo. 1983-278. The decision
whether payments are in the nature of support or a property
settlement, however, is not controlled by the labels assigned to
the payments by the court in the divorce decree or by the parties
in their agreement but, instead, depends on all of the facts and
circumstances. Yoakum v. Commissioner, supra at 140; Beard v.
Commissioner, 77 T.C. 1275, 1283-1284 (1981); Gammill v.
Commissioner, 73 T.C. 921, 926-927 (1980), affd. 710 F.2d 607
(10th Cir. 1982); Hesse v. Commissioner, 60 T.C. 685, 691 (1973),
affd. without published opinion 511 F.2d 1393 (3d Cir. 1975).
In deciding whether payments are a property settlement or
alimony, we have considered whether: (a) The recipient
surrendered valuable property rights in exchange for the
payments; (b) the parties intended the payments to effect a
division of their assets; (c) the amount of the payments plus the
5 Sec. 71(c)(2), which applies to divorce instruments
executed before 1985, designates certain payments which are made
over a period of more than 10 years as periodic and thus taxable
to the recipient to the extent of 10 percent of the principal
sum. Dr. Ehrenworth made payments to Mrs. Spector for 12 years,
under the terms of the agreement. Respondent did not argue and
we do not address the applicability of that section.
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