Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
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Disagreeable
I am referring to your culpability. You had nothing to do with any fraud conspiracy until you just learned of it. That might be considered all that is needed to toll the statute, if you fail to correct the issues. Llworking was trying to pass it off that 3 years and no big deal. The IRS will likely not view it so gratuitously. I do not see any down sides for you, as long as you take the appropriate actions now that you are aware of what happened. The biggest thing you need to do is obtain professional legal council to protect yourself from her actions in each of these areas. That will likely involve allowing all prosecutions picked up by the various entities to progress with your assistance.
Once again, do NOT do ANYTHING that this poster says regarding taxes unless you have consulted a local tax professional.
Based on the above quote Disagreeable clearly did not understand a word that I said. I am a tax professional (and have been for nearly 30 years) and I know what I am talking about. Also, you cannot rely on information provided by family law attorneys or immigration attorneys regarding taxes. You need a tax professional and if you want to spend the money (unnecessary) to have that professional be an attorney then you need a tax attorney.
Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
Apparently, llworking does not think you should consult a tax lawyer as I suggested, instead he thinks you should consult a tax-preparer. I will give you a clue. The tax lawyer will know much, much, more than a tax preparer. For his benefit I will repeat one of the two times I said this.
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The biggest thing you need to do is obtain professional legal council to protect yourself from her actions in each of these areas. That will likely involve allowing all prosecutions picked up by the various entities to progress with your assistance.
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llworking
Once again, do NOT do ANYTHING that this poster says regarding taxes unless you have consulted a local tax professional.
Based on the above quote Disagreeable clearly did not understand a word that I said. I am a tax professional (and have been for nearly 30 years) and I know what I am talking about. Also, you cannot rely on information provided by family law attorneys or immigration attorneys regarding taxes. You need a tax professional and if you want to spend the money (unnecessary) to have that professional be an attorney then you need a tax attorney.
Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
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Disagreeable
Apparently, llworking does not think you should consult a tax lawyer as I suggested, instead he thinks you should consult a tax-preparer. I will give you a clue. The tax lawyer will know much, much, more than a tax preparer. For his benefit I will repeat one of the two times I said this.
Do you understand the function of a tax attorney? I also said tax professional, not tax preparer. Please, this is definitely not your area of expertise since you instructed (not suggested or recommended but actually instructed) someone to do something with taxes that they could not do.
Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
So now you are a tax attorney with experience defending IRS fraud charges? When you are charged with a criminal act by the IRS, you don't call a tax preparer to defend you in court. Have you been going to court holding yourself out as an attorney? The answer is no. You prepare tax returns, you do not defend against fraud violations of the tax code. Puffing your qualifications does not assist the OP. You obviously do not understand fraud statutes. They generally run 3 or 6 years FROM LAST AFFIRMATIVE ACT. That is not 3 years as you said earlier.
(as an aside I suspect you are from Indiana and we have disagreed many times before)
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llworking
Do you understand the function of a tax attorney? I also said tax professional, not tax preparer. Please, this is definitely not your area of expertise since you instructed (not suggested or recommended but actually instructed) someone to do something with taxes that they could not do.
Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
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Disagreeable
No you are not married. Great for you as she is not entitled to alimony etc.. Further, she committed fraud to obtain her citizenship and after you notify them, they will likely deport her, if she does not have jail time for bigamy and immigration fraud to serve. You also need to refile your taxes for the past ten years it appears, to avoid this coming back on you. There may be other services illegally received that might need to be refunded also.
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llworking
Please note that the tax advice you received is really, really, really BAD advice...and some of the rest of it may be really bad advice as well. Your marriage also may not be completely void, it may be voidable based on the bigamy.
A code section not previously provided, Family Code Sec. 2201, provides in relevant part, "A subsequent marriage contracted by a person during the life of a former husband or wife of the person, with a person other than the former husband or wife, is illegal and void from the beginning". There are exceptions, which do not appear to apply based on the facts given, but due to the fact that there are a lot of issues in this case - tax, immigration, a marriage from another country (and issues of proving that marriage), as well as the possibility that the spouse will be denying that she was married - if you want to end this relationship it sounds like it would be a very good idea to resolve the marriage through a formal action for annulment. A court judgment also makes clear that you're free to remarry, rather than leaving a cloud hanging over your head, and may help establish that you consistently acted in good faith in the event of future tax action.
If you don't want to end this relationship, you can consider remarrying legally once the foreign divorce is finalized. (Were this a TV show, six months from now another husband would be popping up....)
I agree that it would be very sensible to discuss this situation with a tax professional, and that the tax professional does not need to be somebody with a law degree - but should be somebody competent to analyze the situation and provide appropriate advice and any necessary corrective action. As llworking indicates, by "tax professional" we mean the spectrum of accounting and legal professionals who are competent to handle this type of issue.
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Dogmatique
I would be VERY careful of raising immigration fraud as an issue.
Because it's quite possible the OP could be deemed equally responsible for the fraud.
It's possible, although I'm skeptical that under the facts an investigation would conclude that the OP was acting knowingly - there are three prior U.S. marriages, I suspect with no prior spouse being aware of the overseas marriage, this marriage is by all appearances bona fide and has continued for ten years, etc. - none of the hallmarks of a typical fraud case.
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Disagreeable
So now you are a tax attorney with experience defending IRS fraud charges?
And you are? Now that we've resolved that issue... I have not heard of the IRS criminally prosecuting a spouse who submitted joint tax returns as married when in fact their marriage was void due to the other spouse's bigamy. Can you direct me to information about such a prosecution?
Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
Thanks for this. I think I understand the basic fact pattern. If differs a bit from mine, inasmuch as the citizenship was started in the first (true marriage).
Funny read. One has to expect Bambrough (the real husband) wasn't at all happy with the surname "Chin" all over 'his' kid's birth certificates! Perhaps that had something to do with the subsequent divorce. Li (wife-defendant) had a fake marriage with Chin BEFORE her divorce of Bambrough. She told INS she was lawfully married to Chin and that was the basis of her application. When in fact, she couldn't be married to Chin because at the time of the Chin marriage, she was still married to Bambrough. So, if she had just waited until after the Bambrough divorce, she would have been okay??
Isn't there just some law/case out there that just comes right out and says "any 'marriage' while you are still married isn't a marriage at all"? Answering my own question, I'm guessing that is the Bigamy statues?
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Perfect...Thanks Mr Know It All. Family Code 2201 (a) (1) is directly on point. Thanks a Million! I'm going to research cases involving this section. Disagreeable pointed me to an online resource.
Today I made an appointment with an attorney versed in divorce and immigration. She has a counter-part who is very well briefed in immigration issues (even teaches the topic at an elite law school). I hope to have more answers than questions by this time next week. As for the taxes, I suspect nothing could go forward before we know where we are going on the possible bigamy and immigration fraud issues. So I'm anticipating having the attorney(ies) pointing me to someone at a later date (but well before I file taxes next year).
Re: Spouse Didn't Divorce Before We Married
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at2470
Thanks for this. I think I understand the basic fact pattern. If differs a bit from mine, inasmuch as the citizenship was started in the first (true marriage).
Funny read. One has to expect Bambrough (the real husband) wasn't at all happy with the surname "Chin" all over 'his' kid's birth certificates! Perhaps that had something to do with the subsequent divorce. Li (wife-defendant) had a fake marriage with Chin BEFORE her divorce of Bambrough. She told INS she was lawfully married to Chin and that was the basis of her application. When in fact, she couldn't be married to Chin because at the time of the Chin marriage, she was still married to Bambrough. So, if she had just waited until after the Bambrough divorce, she would have been okay??
Isn't there just some law/case out there that just comes right out and says "any 'marriage' while you are still married isn't a marriage at all"? Answering my own question, I'm guessing that is the Bigamy statues?
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Perfect...Thanks Mr Know It All. Family Code 2201 (a) (1) is directly on point. Thanks a Million! I'm going to research cases involving this section. Disagreeable pointed me to an online resource.
Today I made an appointment with an attorney versed in divorce and immigration. She has a counter-part who is very well briefed in immigration issues (even teaches the topic at an elite law school). I hope to have more answers than questions by this time next week. As for the taxes, I suspect nothing could go forward before we know where we are going on the possible bigamy and immigration fraud issues. So I'm anticipating having the attorney(ies) pointing me to someone at a later date (but well before I file taxes next year).
That is a very good way to go about it. Particularly the tax issues. You deal with the underlying problem (possible bigamy and immigration issues) before you contemplate anything with the taxes.
However, what I think that you are going to find regarding the taxes, is that even a tax attorney would tell you to leave them be unless you paid substantially less tax than you would have paid as a single person. An inaccurate filing status is only significant if it results in substantially less tax being paid (or substantially more refundable credits being issued). I spend 9 months of the year helping people resolve issues with the IRS, and once again, have been doing it for almost 30 years. YOU have definitely committed NO tax fraud and its highly unlikely that even your wife would have considered to have committed tax fraud. Tax fraud requires that you knowingly and intentionally take actions on your tax return that result in substantial underpayment of tax.
And once again, the IRS is not permitted to even go back more than three years to pursue an error on a tax return unless they can substantiate actual fraud. Even if your wife were to go to jail for bigamy and/or be stripped of her citizenship for immigration fraud that does not substantiate at all that you knowingly and intentionally took actions on your tax return that resulted in a substantial underpayment of tax...nor that she did either.