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acquired prior to marriage, by gift or inheritance to one spouse,
or “with separate things” is included in the definition of
separate property. La. Civ. Code Ann. arts. 2338, 2341 (West
1985).
With respect to life insurance in particular, there exists a
substantial body of caselaw, at both the State and the Federal
levels, that attempts to parse the relationship between such
policies and the above community property maxims. The Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to which appeal in this case would
normally lie, addressed this issue in Catalano v. United States,
supra. In that case the husband acquired a policy of life
insurance on his life with community funds and named his wife as
both owner and beneficiary. Id. at 1060. Upon the husband’s
death, the Commissioner asserted that one-half of the proceeds
should be included in his gross estate under section 2042. Id.
The Court of Appeals, however, reasoned:
The Louisiana jurisprudence is well settled that life
insurance policies on the life of the husband
unconditionally owned by the wife or in which she is
the irrevocable beneficiary are, as a matter of law,
deemed part of her separate estate. They therefore are
not within the Louisiana presumption that all property
acquired during the marriage is community property. * *
* [Id. at 1061-1062.]
The court then held that “where a husband takes out a policy
of insurance on his life and either irrevocably names his wife
the beneficiary or makes her the owner of the policy, he retains
no interest in the proceeds of the policy under Louisiana law
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