Marital Blues

[Christian]

A couple has separated and the husband would like to file jointly for 2017. His wife will do so if the expected refunds can be sent to his and her separate bank accounts. I can do this with the federal refund but I don't know if Virginia allows this. The local commissioner is clueless on this point and the department's help line is constantly busy. Do any of my fellow tax folks in Virginia have an answer for this one? I have never encountered this ever before.  

[Hahn1040]

unless it has changed recently: NO

I know that I could not do it in the past.

what I have done is: have one of them get the entire VA, then net the federal so that they each get their overall portion.

Since she is the one "concerned"  then, have her receive the VA refund.  It generally arrives faster anyway.  And then she gets a smaller federal refund because she received the entire VA.

[Christian]

Your idea occurred to me after I sent my post. I'll simply increase her federal refund by 1/2 of the expected Virginia refund reducing his federal by that amount. Who wants to bet me he will balk?  

[Lee B]

12 minutes ago, Christian said:

Your idea occurred to me after I sent my post. I'll simply increase her federal refund by 1/2 of the expected Virginia refund reducing his federal by that amount. Who wants to bet me he will balk?  

Actually I did something very similar to that , 5 or 6 years ago.

Really nasty divorce, but after I carefully explained it to both of them, they were both  OK with it.

[TAXMAN]

That's the way I have done it for 2 years now.

[FDNY]

These have always been the worst clients for me to deal with because when they both want to stay with me they think they can use me as a spy or sounding board against the other.  And it is worse when they have kids.   Being put in difficult situations in the past I now have a policy of cutting one loose after a divorce.   Of course you get to keep the nice one that way.

[Terry D EA]

I agree totally. I like to cut one loose as well just to avoid any potential conflicts. However, I do have two divorced couples who cooperate with each other very well. They insisted there would never be a problem and wanted me to do both. These folks are both very good friends as well so it would seem things could really get sticky. But...so far so good. Yes there are kids involved but again, and it may not be the norm, all is well with this.