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Jail Becomes Home for Husband Stuck With Lifetime Alimony
2013 Aug 26, 2:08am 2,373 views 14 comments
by zzyzzx follow (9)
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Not sure about the alimony laws in the rest of the country but in NJ they are a joke. The guy next door to my parents got divorced. Wife got the McMansion and a hefty alimony payment (75k a year) plus child support for 4 kids. 3 months after he moved out, new boyfriend moves in and has been there for 4 years. There's no financial incentive for them to marry as they continue to bleed this guy dry.
There was another guy I knew that divorced about 40 years ago. He's 88 and still paying alimony. He's dead broke and his social security doesn't even cover the alimony. His son tried taking it to court for him and they put them through the ringer refusing to modify the obligations because they couldn't produce his tax return from 1971.
turtledove
@
2013 Aug 28, 1:10pm
The long arm of the "state" law isn't really that long at all.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am almost certain....
Where the children reside determines which state laws apply. He can't expect protection simply by moving to another state. Moving wouldn't help him with alimony, either, as long as the ex-spouse stays in the state that the order was initially decreed. In other words, only if both parties move out of that state would another state's laws be applicable.
I'm from the ghetto, knocked up 14 women and haven't paid a dime for it. The key is to not work and let the community pay for it.
Ceffer
@
2013 Aug 28, 4:05pm
I thought that the bailout included banksters' alimony payments and personal bad debts, even gambling, so that they could get back to the job of performing heroic and helpful deeds for our country and our economy.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/jail-becomes-home-for-husband-stuck-with-lifetime-alimony.html
The former Citadel Investment Group Inc. portfolio manager, who once earned $1 million a year, has been jailed for missing court-ordered payments at least eight times in the past two years as he coped with the end of his 17-year marriage.
The reason he ran afoul of the law was simple. He was out of work for most of that time, a victim of a weak economy, and he ran through his savings trying to pay his wife alimony and child support that totaled almost $100,000 a year.
“It's a circle of hell there's just no way out of,” Schochet said. “I paid it as long as I could.”
Schochet and ex-spouses in similar changed circumstances say New Jersey's law unfairly imposes lifetime alimony on them. If they fail to make payments, like the $78,000 a year Schochet owes his ex-wife in alimony, they can be jailed for contempt of court regardless of whether they have a job or resources.
Relief may be on the way. In states such as New Jersey, Connecticut and Florida where divorce laws are based on century-old notions of what an ex-spouse deserves, laws are being proposed to limit alimony in recognition of wives' earning power and the changed economic circumstances husbands can face.