One of the areas of practice that I have developed over the years is defending parties in contempt of court proceedings. Those are never easy cases (don’t believe me? Read about this one), but some of the ugliest occur in the family courts where judges often will hold an ex-husband in contempt of court and jail him for failure to fulfill a support obligation.
According to this NY Times article, New York is experiencing a similar problem as family court judges in a number of cases there have used this supposedly rare sanction to punish ex-husbands. Although information on the number of these debtor prison-type cases is mostly anecdotal, it’s reasonably clear that the use of the contempt sanction in financial-inability-to-pay cases is a more widespread practice than it should be. As I’ve mentioned to more than a few divorce lawyers and family law court judges over the years, it’s particularly difficult for an ex-husband to generate income to pay his support or alimony obligations while he is cooling his heels in a local jail cell.