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to be due and payable for a period of 120 months, “or until the
death of either party or the remarriage of recipient”. The
second paragraph specifically provides that “This portion of the
alimony” shall not terminate on the death of petitioner or the
remarriage of Ms. Springer.12 Under the first paragraph, the
alimony payments will terminate on the death of either party or
the remarriage of Ms. Springer. Unlike the monthly payments
provided for in the first paragraph, the annual payments were not
to terminate on either the death of petitioner or the remarriage
of Ms. Springer. “Reading the agreement from a reasonable,
commonsense perspective”, Estate of Goldman v. Commissioner, 112
T.C. at 323, and interpreting the writing as a whole, we believe
that the initial listing of three events causing termination
followed by the parallel paragraph specifically excluding only
two of those events from termination implies that the occurrence
of the third event would continue to cause termination of the
payments.
Other language used by petitioner and Ms. Springer indicates
that the annual payments would have terminated on the death of
Ms. Springer. The marital settlement uses the same phrase in
describing the purpose of both the monthly and annual payments:
“alimony for the support and maintenance of the wife”. This
12We note that in the divorce decree of the Nebraska court,
the monthly and annual payment provisions are contained in the
same paragraph.
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