If someone gives a gift to you, a judge, or anyone else, there is never any tax to the recipient. However, the giver may owe gift tax if it is over the $17,000 limit (2023 inflation adjusted amount). On the other hand, when someone loans you money your failure to pay it back is considered income. See https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/... (Topic No. 431, Canceled Debt – Is It Taxable or Not? )

I am sorry but I believe your described "work for hire" technique was thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court in COMMUNITY FOR CREATIVE NON-VIOLENCE v. REID, 490 U.S. 730 (1989) [login required]. I don't think your contract covers one of the following situations listed in 17 U.S.C. sec. 101, subpart "work make for hire", namely

"(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire."

As CCNV painfully found out above, such a contract is not legally enforceable in terms of copyright ownership if you simply "agree" that the work in question is "work for hire". While a sculptor or photographer can contractually agree to assign his copyright, you will lose in court big time if you simply are hoping that the contractual recitation that this was a "work for hire" somehow works to automatically vest the copyright in you.