ALIMONY RACKET

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19450, 27 March 1933, Page 7

ALIMONY RACKET

AN AMERICAN ABUSE While his wife is living in luxury, in a fashionable part of New York City, enjoying a life of revelry, with a limousine and chauffeur to take her about, a man is languishing in gaol in Albany for failure to pay her alimony. He must stay there as long as he is in arrears. Another man has been a prisoner on a similar charge for thirty months. The peculiar workings of the American alimony laws are instanced in another case, reported in Brooklyn. As the case is summarised in the news, the wife had adopted a policy designed to keep her former mate in gaol. When he was 4500 dollars in arrears in his alimony, she applied for his commitment for contempt of court, not for non-payment of the whole sum, but for amounts ranging from 200 dollars to 600 dollars. If he was unable to pay on any occasion, the wife immediately served another order. Four times he was able to pay. but on the fifth he failed, and was put in gaol. That was on August 7 last. Then on October 10 he managed to raise the sum called for and was released. As he walked from gaol the woman’s sixth order was served, and he was forced to return. In seeking a way to release him. Supreme Court Justice Taylor of New York says: “It appears that the Imprisonment of this man will be terminated only by his death unless the courts find some way to give him relief. Life imprisonment was not and is not the intent of the law.” The Kings County gaol is now primarily a home of alimony prisoners, says the New York State Commission of Correction in the report of its inspection. And “the hopelessness of possibly 50 per cent of the cases in this gaol, at a heavy expense to the country.” says the Commission, “is deplorable.” In other county gaols of New York are alimony prisoners who have been there two or three years, writes John Walker Harrington in the New York “Herald Tribune.” In California is a much-cited instance of a “divorce martyr," a husband imprisoned four years for failure to pay alimony. Similar instances abound in other parts Othe country. A Ray of Hope. But there is a ray of hope for them. In releasing a husband from gaol recently, Justice Alfred V. Norton, of the Supreme Court of Brooklyn, says in his decision that the law is not served by imprisoning a man for a debt growing from marital infelicities if he has neither money nor property on which to levy. „ “Possibly there may come a time, runs the decision “when ameliorative legislation will remedy an otherwise archaic rule of law. Under It alimony Is allowed to continue during the husband’s imprisonment, irrespective of the merits of the situation. Certainly while the defendant languishes in gaol he is an economic waste. He can not be expected to meet current obligations either with respect to his own support or for the maintenance of any other person.” This decision, says Mr. Harrington, will furnish good ammunition for the National Divorce Reform League in where it hopes to obtain passage of two important bills framed to correct the abuses of alimony collection. This organisation Is also extending its activities throughout the United States, with the aid of its 2.000 members. The league is a recent amalgamation of three bodies, the Alimony Payers’ Protective Association, the National Sociological League, and the Divorce Reform League. Under the legislation In New York imprisonment for failure to pay alimony arrears would be discontinued. Those who maintained they could not pay or give bonds or security for payment would be put on parole. If they have no property on which to levy, and are unable to furnish bonds or even retain counsel, they are not likely, points out Mr. Harrington, to get any stronger financially by being in gaol. Under the direction of the court such persons will be released to hunt for jobs diligently, and required to make payments promptly once they are employed or have been able to attend to their business.