Legal Question in Family Law in California

I generally recommend the safe approach, which is to calculate and pay separate spousal and child support and deduct only the spousal support. I have not researched this issue recently, but there was an IRS decision in Wells v. Commissioner that unallocated support is not deductible. There is a contrary decision in Berry v. Commissioner, which is newer. So there is prescedent in your favor. Of course if you deduct it and your spouse dutifully reports it as income, then there will never be a problem. It only becomes a problem when the receiving spouse does not report the income. That gets the IRS involved.

Be very careful in this area. Family support is typically tax deductible, but unless your numbers match up with your spouse's numbers, you may be heading for an audit. Unless you went by guideline support and have a DissoMaster printout, I know there is no clear cut allocation for what is child support and what is spousal support. The key here really is to communicate with the other party and reach an agreement.