"The sad thing about Boyd is he never wrote anything down, " says Robert Coram, Boyd's biographer.

FORBES: Magazine Article

"I assumed Cotnam was the law and I still do, " fumes Robert Galloway, the Mobile, Ala. tax lawyer representing Coram.

FORBES: Double taxation

Here's her sad story: On Mar. 7, 1993, Captain George Coram went down with his tugboat off the New Jersey coast.

FORBES: Double taxation

Christie's claims that Rose, after being confronted, admitted the art did not belong to the couple but was owned by Coram.

FORBES: Magazine Article

As an agent for Coram, Rose consigned to Christie's the 44 paintings plus Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Fire Island Beach, " owned by Berry-Hill.

FORBES: Magazine Article

So Ruby Coram, now 71 and a resident of Theodore, Ala.

FORBES: Double taxation

Coram's Fields was part of an 18th-century foundling hospital, while Tooting Bec Common was reputedly a transit camp for soldiers heading off to the Napoleonic Wars.

BBC: Common people: London's green spaces

"I've wished a million times I had never heard of that money, " laments Coram, who blames her tax troubles for a stroke she had last year.

FORBES: Double taxation

That's how the IRS trapped Coram -- with the AMT.

FORBES: Double taxation

And Coram also said it was aware of the ploy.

BBC: Children 'with no state' in UK

Berry-Hill and Coram filed for Chapter 11 in 2005.

FORBES: Beached

Coram is just one of hundreds of former Alabama plaintiffs who acted on what their attorneys thought was legal precedent and are facing huge back-tax and interest bills from the IRS as a result.

FORBES: Double taxation