Jail Becomes Home for Husband Stuck With Lifetime Alimony

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2013-08-26 23:14

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ari Schochet has grown so accustomed to being sent to jail for missing alimony payments that he goes into a routine.

Before his family-court hearing, Schochet, 41, sticks on a nicotine patch to cope with jailhouse smoking bans, sends an “Ari Off the Grid” e-mail to friends and family, and scrawls key phone numbers in permanent ink on his forearm.

Schochet, who said he worked as a portfolio manager at Citadel Investment Group Inc. and Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG) and 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.'

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A few years back the local paper ran a story about a man who was supposed to have paid $200,000 over two years in child support but had only managed to pay $100,000. His ex-wife had managed to contribute $1000 in that time. The man, of course, was jailed.

What sense does it make to jail the parent who took the responsibility to contribute $100,000 to support his daughter while letting the parent who contributed $1,000 go free? In fact, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the financially responsible parent be rewarded and the irresponsible parent be punished?

Not in the world of family law. We punish those who do good and reward those who do nothing.

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Submitted by el cid on Tue, 2013-08-27 00:07

when he tells people what his life has become, through no fault of his own, they usually say something like 'no way that could happen, you must have beat her, or worse'. he tells them it is about nothing but $$.

nothing like 'honorable' officers of the court dealing fairly and honestly w/ those they swore to protect and defend. gosh, what an 'honorable' profession. our forefathers would be so proud that the courts still honor their demands that no debtor's prison should exist on these shores. all those lawyers, judges and legislators, and this is the kind of laws we get. looks like they try to screw everything up.

no doubt, if our forefathers could come forth from their graves, they would take up arms and shoot at this den of thieves, liars and conmen.

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Submitted by daveinga on Tue, 2013-08-27 03:01

Men have been suffering for years with lifelong alimony payments that are leading to jail if not paid, outrageously high, and unmodifiable. Nobody has seen fit to do anything about that, let alone talk about it in the media. But now that some of the injustice related to these laws falls on the shoulders of women, now it's getting a lot of press, now the system needs to be modified. The extent to which men are non-persons in the eyes of the law is visible here. Only when women suffer and complain does anything change. That's "equality under the law" for you.

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Submitted by redwoodwriter on Tue, 2013-08-27 19:41