Legal Question in Family Law in New Mexico

Re: If I file for divorce

That will depend on whether you qualify for the innocent spouse relief. Go to the IRS website, IRS.gov, and look up innocent spouse and read the requirements. If you meet the requirements they let you off the hook. Except for that, which I suspect ought to protect you, in general both spouses are liable for tax debts incurred during the marriage. In your divorce settlement, you can agree that one of you is responsible for a certain debt, which means, for instance, that if he agreed to be responsible for the tax debt, and the feds came after you and took it from you, then you could have an action against him to get it back. That may be an unlikely prospect considering he's not a particularly reliable person, but that's what you can do if the innocent spouse relief doesn't apply to you. Check out the website and call the IRS for more information - believe it or not, they're fairly helpful if you just ask for general informaton and not for advice on your specific situation.

You may also want to ask this question again to Law Guru and not under the family law heading but under tax law to get info from a lawyer who specializes in taxes, which I do not.