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includes amounts received as alimony or separate maintenance
payments.”).
For Federal income tax purposes, alimony is defined as any
payment in cash that satisfies all of the following four
requirements: (a) Such payment is received by, or on behalf of, a
spouse under a divorce or separation instrument; (b) the divorce
or separation instrument does not designate such payment as a
payment which is not includable in gross income under section 71
and not allowable as a deduction under section 215; (c) the payee
spouse and the payor spouse are not members of the same household
at the time the payment is made; and (d) there is no liability to
make any such payment, or a substitute for such payment, in cash
or property, after the death of the payee spouse. Sec.
71(b)(1)(A)-(D). The characterization of the payments as
“alimony” in the divorce or separation instrument does not
establish whether those payments are treated as alimony for
Federal income tax purposes; the test is whether the four
statutory requirements are met. See Hoover v. Commissioner, 102
F.3d 842, 844 (6th Cir. 1996) (“The mere use of the word
‘alimony’ does not affect the tax consequences of payments.”),
affg. T.C. Memo. 1995-183.
In this case, the first three requirements of section
71(b)(1) are clearly satisfied with respect to the payments at
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