I am planning on filing Head of Household and claim my children from my first marriage, and letting my husband (we are separated – he lives next door with his mother and I live in their rental property. Son spends more of his time there.) claim Head of Household with our son since he is the one who financially support our son mainly. My monthly income is child support from 1st marriage, and my income is only about $600.00 bring home a month. I am planning on using my refund check to get my own checking acct. and one of my questions is, can we both have our refund checks direct deposited into our existing joint acct. (Since our refund checks will only have one of our names on them.) Then close that acct. and each open our own? (I get so worried one little glitch in a delay of a deposit or something will reek havoc with my very tight budget.) We still have a joint acct. and I have no access to it (by choice) and he gives me my child support payments that are direct deposited into it.)
2007-01-07 06:26:38 · 4 answers · asked by PuterAddict 1 in Business & Finance ➔ Taxes ➔ United States
Are you legally separated and / or have you lived apart more than six months?
If you are legally separated as of 12/31/06 then you can both file head of household because you are both in fact single, according to IRS regs. If this is not the case and you are just separated then ONLY ONE OF YOU CAN FILE HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD and only if you have lived apart for the last six months of 2006. The other one would have to file married filing separately which is bad because you can't claim a lot of tax breaks such as earned income credit. The reason is that the head of household must have provided more than half the cost of keeping up the home and you are still one unit.
If you are on amicable terms, I suggest you file jointly.
There is no problem with receiving a tax refund in one name into a joint account. Receiving a joint refund into an account with one name would be a problem.
I do not understand the reasoning behind your not having access to the joint account. In fact, you do have access if you choose (unless transactions require both signatures) simply because it is a joint account. How do you access your child support payments if you don't have access? That defeats the purpose and is in fact not legal because it is circumventing the law.
My advice:
You have a job. Get your own account. Arrange for direct deposit of your paycheck. You would also be able to get child support direct deposited there too. If you have trouble getting it through a regular bank, H&R Block can arrange to set one up for you. You need to start managing your own finances. Email me if you have questions.
2007-01-07 06:51:28 · answer #1 · answered by Sweet Mystery of Life 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
As far as refund checks go, if a check has one name on it, the bank will accept it into a joint account with that name.
If you have regular deposits into a bank account from child support, go to that bank, open your own account now, and have those payments transferred monthly from the joint account to your separate account. Yes, you can do it now.
Not part of your question, but I want to add:
You say your spouse lives next door with his mother, and while true, it could be argued that he does not live separately from you. Who is to say that your spouse doesn't spend some time at your place? It would be hard to disprove.
If the IRS questions what you are doing, they may well deny one or both of you the Head of Household status, given the particular circumstances. They may say you and your spouse must file Married Filing Separately if you refuse to file a joint return. If one or both of you have claimed the Earned Income Credit, it may be denied and you have to go through an extra screening process for several years to get the credit at all.
If a knowledgable tax preparer were to receive this return, many would refuse to do it given the reasonable chance that your position would be rejected by the IRS.
Other options available to you:
1. Married Filing Jointly and claim all three children.
2. Married Filing Jointly and claim two children. The grandmother can file Head of Household and claim the child that lives primarily there. Since she owns both properties, she can substantiate her position that she maintains the household.
2007-01-07 07:25:54 · answer #2 · answered by ninasgramma 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can both have your checks deposited into your joint account, but what is keeping either of you from taking the it all and closing the account?
2007-01-07 08:29:34 · answer #3 · answered by Eddie C 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I'm sure you can have your refund direct deposited into any account you want...
2007-01-07 06:31:13 · answer #4 · answered by Mary G 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋