Fiscal information for those married or divorced in 2006

2006 could have been a very important year for those of you involved in relationships. If you are married or divorced during the year, your tax situation changed when you know it or not.

Relationships and love are two of those great mysteries of life. If you find that magical person, they may grow in a relationship that leads to a joyful marriage. Unfortunately, about half of all marriages fail today, a sad statistic if ever there was one. We hope that you do not. If you got married or divorced in 2006, however, you must keep in mind the event involves all tax filings.

We start with the happy event. If you were married in 2006, congratulations! Now you must make some changes to the tax information. If you take your spouse's name, you must let the IRS know. Ironically, you do so, notifying the Social Security Administration. Hey, it's the government! Nobody said it would make no sense!

You must submit a form to notify the administration of social security. The form is SS-5. You can get at a local office social security administration. You can get a list of office addresses off the website for the Social Security Administration. Once filed, it takes about two weeks for information to be updated. If you do not take the name of the new spouse, you do not need to do anything.

If 2006 was a year of unhappy, you have my condolences. In this case, I'm talking about a divorce. A divorce is a wretched, brutal event. The last thing I want to think about is taxes, but there's no way around it. The main question is if you drop the name of your former spouse. If you take this step, you should contact the Social Security Administration and file the same form above.

Marriage and divorce are two sides of the same report. We hope that you experience one of them alone. Regardless of where you are in the process, make sure you keep up on your taxes .......