In Bennis v. Michigan, 516 U.S. 442, (1996), the US Supreme Court put its imprimatur on the widespread government practice of deducting expenses from the auction proceeds of a forfeited vehicle. The underlying facts are fairly straightforward. A vehicle jointly owned by a husband and wife was used by the husband to engage in sex with a prostitute. Although there was no allegation that the wife consented to her husband's illicit use of the seized vehicle, the US Supreme Court upheld the forfeiture of the wife's entire interest in the seized vehicle. The Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges based on the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and found that under the Michigan statute, the lack of culpability on the part of an owner of a seized vehicle used as the instrumentality of a crime did not serve as a bar to forfeiture.