[valeriek]

My husband and I have full custody of his 2 boys court ordered they actually got taken from there mom and we had to get them out of foster care. They have been in our custody for 4 years no children services involved or anything. This year the kids mother that has not been in the kids life filed them on her income tax and she got the money for them and when my husband tired to file it says that dependent has already been claimed now I would like everyone that answers this question to understand we buy the cloths, food, schedule the doctors appointments and etc. This women has not been there or bought anything for these boys in the last 4 years what can I do??

[ebaines]

File your taxes the old fashioned way - with a paper return - and claim the boys as your dependents. You can not file electronically if the ex-wife has already filed and claimed them, as the computer sees the discrepancy and automatically rejects your return. But if you file using paper, the IRS will investigate to see who is the appropriate party to claim the boys, and will disallow the deduction by the other party. I suggest that to help this you attach a copy of the court order granting you custody. It would also help if you could get a copy of school records showing your home address as the boys' residence.

[AtlantaTaxExpert]

Valerie:

I suspect your husband filed the return electronically, and it got rejected because the IRS computer showed the two boys' SSN on another tax return.

You and your husband will have to file the return via normal mail. Attach a statement to the return stating the facts, i.e. you have custody of the children, you provide ALL of their support, and their mother has NOT provided child support nor does she have visitation rights.

You can also attach some proof of support, such as medical bills, schools records, etc. with the children's names on them.

The IRS will then analyze both returns and then contact the mother to request that she provide some sort of proof that she has the right to claim the children's exemptions. More than likely, she will not respond because she does NOT have the proof.

The IRS will then process your return and grant the exemptions to you and your husband, and present her a bill for taxes owed due to the two exemptions being disallowed.

This process can take as little as six weeks or as long as a year, but I suspect it will take about 3 months for you to get your refund.

[valeriek]

Thank you very much for all your feed back

[AtlantaTaxExpert]

Glad to help!