## Facts

- Samuel Ochs claimed a 1946 federal income-tax deduction under Internal Revenue Code § 23(x) for $1,456.50 spent to place his two minor children (ages six and four) in day school and later boarding school.
- Ochs’s wife had undergone a thyroidectomy in 1943; pathology showed thyroid carcinoma with lymph-node metastases, followed by recommended radiation treatment.
- After surgery, she could speak only in a whisper; speaking was painful and caused nervousness and exhaustion.
- Physicians advised that keeping the children away from her was necessary for her improvement and that continued irritation and nervousness might contribute to a recurrence.
- Ochs kept the children in day school for part of 1946 and in boarding school for the remainder of 1946, asserting the separation was for his wife’s health.
- The Commissioner disallowed the deduction as a personal or family expense; the Tax Court sustained the deficiency determination.

## Issues

1. Whether amounts paid to maintain a taxpayer’s minor children in day and boarding school, undertaken on medical advice to protect the taxpayer’s spouse from aggravation and potential disease recurrence, qualify as deductible “medical care” expenses under § 23(x).
2. Whether such payments are instead nondeductible “personal, living, or family expenses” under § 24(a)(1) despite a medical motive and asserted health benefit to the spouse.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed the Tax Court and upheld the Commissioner’s disallowance of the deduction.
- The court held that the schooling and boarding costs were not amounts paid “for medical care” of the spouse within § 23(x).
- The court classified the expenditures as nondeductible family expenses, even though incurred on physicians’ advice and intended to benefit the spouse’s health.
- Judge Frank dissented, viewing the medically prescribed separation as falling within mitigation or prevention of disease.

## Legal Principles

- A deductible medical expense must be sufficiently direct as an amount paid “for medical care” of the taxpayer, spouse, or dependent; a health-related motive does not automatically convert other expenditures into medical care.
- Expenses that are ordinarily and principally personal or family in character (including costs of children’s schooling and maintenance) remain nondeductible under § 24(a)(1) even if they incidentally serve a medical objective.
- Courts may limit medical-expense deductions to avoid allowing indirect, medically motivated lifestyle or family expenditures to displace the statutory bar on personal and family deductions.
- Acceptance of medical necessity as a factual matter does not control tax characterization; the classification of an expenditure as “medical care” versus “family expense” is a legal determination.

## Conclusion

The court held that amounts paid to send the taxpayer’s children to day and boarding school, undertaken to reduce stress on a seriously ill spouse, were nondeductible family expenses rather than deductible medical-care costs under § 23(x), preserving the statutory boundary between medical deductions and personal or family living expenses.


Ochs v. Commissioner, 195 F.2d 692 (2d Cir. 1952)