Judge Cary Douglas Pugh has some bad news for Brett Stevan Jurries, teamed up with Sherise Julie Bruce, in T. C. Sum. Op, 2024-6, filed 5/22/24. Brett and Julie are splitsville, and Brett, a truck driver with a high school education, deferred to college educated ex Julie, who prepared their year at issue return.

Julie took unreimbursed business expenses on the truck Brett’s boss owned and paid all expenses. Brett applied for and got apportioned Section 6015(c) innocent spousery on some of Julie’s doings, but he claims he should get Section 6015(f) equity for the rest.

This brings in the Big Seven of Rev. Proc. 2013-34, § 4.01. IRS says Brett flunks Condition 2, because he got Section 6015(c) apportionment. No, says Judge Pugh, caselaw says you can still try for equity even if you got apportioned.

But Brett’s claim of fraud to get around Condition 7 fails. Brett says he never got a copy of the return for year at issue, but he had the passwords for the TurboTax return Julie filed, and she never stopped him from checking it out.

But he did check something, the share of the refund Julie gave him.

“Perhaps most damaging is the evidence in the record that Ms. Bruce deposited a portion of the refund from their 2016 joint return into Mr. Jurries’s checking account. Mr. Jurries testified at trial that he knew they could not deduct the expenses disallowed by the IRS because [his boss] owned the vehicle and paid its expenses. He received and kept part of the refund arising from the disallowed deduction. While the math might not work precisely, he has not explained how it would be equitable for him to keep all of the refund he received and leave Ms. Bruce to pay his share of the deficiency back. Nor did he suggest that he should bear the liability for the share of the refund he received attributable to the disallowed deduction.” T. C. Sum. Op. 2024-6, at pp. 6-7.

Brett took the refund, but trashed the equity.

Brett’s trusty attorney, whom I’ll call Bulldog Chris, brought two (count ’em, two) of Gonzaga U’s students along, to see what the Big Leagues, and real clients, are like. Good training.