USA Divorced taxpayer needs to file prior year returns for "married years"

[taskman]

I have a divorced client who needs to file prior year unfiled tax returns covering periods that pre-date her divorce.
There has been no contact from the estranged former spouse since the divorce. As I understand it, since California
is a community property state, married filing separate filers must allocate and report one half of the income and deductions of the marital "community" on each of their married filing separate tax returns. There are no W-2's etc. to be found for the prior years.
In order to determine the earnings of the former spouse, an IRS transcript is needed. My question is how can a transcript be requested from IRS if the former spouse is not available or willing to provide the required authorization since both signatures are required when requesting a transcript for married taxpayers?

 

[Houston Tax Attorney]

The divorce decree should address this. It probably says that the spouses have to provide the info. If it doesn't, the court probably retains jurisdiction over the matter and can force the other spouse to provide the info.

As a practical matter, if the IRS has prepared a SFR, the total income would be listed on the account transcript.