Legal Question in Family Law in Maryland

Re: Breach of seperation Agreement

If I understand your question correctly, the IRS withheld a portion of the tax refund due to you and your wife because of a prior tax which you, and not your wife, owed. You have a separation agreement in which you agreed to divide all tax refunds, and your wife retained the entire refund minus the part withheld for your debt. If she had given you half of the amount received, it seems to me that she would have been paying half of your debt. If your debt,which was withheld from the refund,equalled or exceeded one half of the refund which was otherwise due, I would say she owes you nothing. If the prior debt was less than half of the refund due, she should owe you some part of the refund. For exammple, if your joint refund for the year 2000 was $1000, and your debt, which was withheld, was $200, and the net refund was $800, your wife should have kept $500 and given you $300. If the IRS sent your wife the full amount of the refund, and credited none towards your debt, and you still owe the entire amount of your tax debt, she should pay you half of the refund,which you should use to pay your debt.