@JDastot wrote:
Here’s the sticky part in all of this. Yes federal law overrides state law HOWEVER IRS Form 14815 allows the use of a STATE divorce or custody order to prove the legal right to claim a dependent. Thereby the IRS is giving credence and i believe legal standing to a state order that allows said state order to trump federal law. If you can use your custody document in an audit for instance to prove the legal right to claim a child on taxes and the IRS accepts this as proof that implies that the court order trumps the over 50% rule. I would imagine the IRS does this to ensure you don’t have a bunch of rogue parents doing whatever they want and bogging the IRS down with reports of fraud etc. Also in the case of joint custody you would get into getting down to half a day to determine the “over 50% of the time”.
Form 14815 asks for documents proving that the person claiming the dependent meets the conditions for claiming a dependent, which are listed in IRS publication 501
The law is here https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/152
The regulations are here https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.152-4
A divorce decree or custody order may be used to claim a child if it was signed before Jan 1, 2009. The fact that the IRS allows taxpayers to submit the custody order does not mean they will consider it, especially when the regulations say that custody orders from 2009 or later can't be used to claim a dependent, and only physical residency of the child counts.
A custody order could be used as part of the proof of where the child physically lived, and it will be given more or less weight depending on the quality of other proofs submitted by both taxpayers. But a custody order from 2009 or later can't be used as the only proof required to claim a child dependent.
