Debtor's Prisons in America

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http://www.mrcustodycoach.com/blog/illegal-child-support-debtors-prisons


http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:oPkv1D80XtsJ:www.washburnlaw.edu/wlj/42-1/articles/james-richard.pdf+kansas+debtors+prison&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjZyr7PHPaf2YlEiLqd2bRKrZKFwSNUIFDjfsm8prasqStE-eAll4irhy4NdzugHpGY-5oVQUwDpWpYhwY7JIcOqt--DLqCzgfDwdH5ArucYg1kMEkF5kNVEczx7XaYKfKC1C2b&sig=AHIEtbRjU6N913fQMc8o69T3xLi5gBTJLQ&pli=1


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Unless I'm misunderstanding, it looks like he was in for fraud (hiding the money), not simply debt.

But in general, debtors prison is a bad idea. Especially today. Could you imagine how many people would be locked up? Just think of all the foreclosures and unpaid medical bills. Could help with unemployment though - I mean with half the country locked up

With the mountains of debt that will never be paid existing throughout the system, harsher and harsher backlashes against defaulters will be inevitable. This is nothing compared to what's coming.

Getting sent to prison for not paying your debts is about the dumbest thing that can happen these days.

There's no excuse for not supporting your children. Deadbeat dads don't deserve freedom. If you're married, stay married and make it work. If you have a job, any job, send those payments if it's an unavoidable situation (things happen, but there's no excuse for broken marriages, either). If you're not married, don't have sex, wrap it in a sack if you do, and stop making babies you can't pay for!

You can't get out of student loans. If you have a good education, then you're prepared to live a productive life. SO GET TO WORK!! !

If you're squirreling away assets while making regularly scheduled payments to creditors and you have enough in liquid assets to pay off your debts when trouble hits, why not pay them off? In a downturn, sure you need accumulated assets to survive. But if things are looking ugly and you see you can't make payments from your income, that's a pretty dangerous sign of worse things to come. Pay off your creditors and keep your income. It's as simple as that.

I've heard a lot of stories about bankruptcy proceedings. One person filed bankruptcy and soon after won a lawsuit for well over $250,000. She wasn't poor to begin with, but a lot of people will go through bankruptcy for things beyond their control, such as dealing with a spouse who has experienced substantial business losses that affects joint marital assets and liabilities, and these don't go away just because you get a divorce. Someone might be perfectly ok with surrendering a house but not ok being liable for an upside-down-debt that goes unresolved after foreclosure sale. But in THIS case, she only had to deal with some $50,000 of debt, and she was in the ideal position to pay it off. But instead, she wanted to keep ALL of her reward. So when her lawyer wouldn't tell her what she wanted to hear, she let the case be dismissed and proceeded to find a lawyer to file for her in a different federal court district. Within minutes of filing the petition, the Trustee in the case directly contacts the lawyer and asks if he knows who his client is and whether he is sure he wants to continue. The lawyer says no and asks for clarification. The trustee explains what's going on, and the lawyer manages to get himself removed from the case.

Time passes.

The client then finds a lawyer who WILL take her case. Not only will the court refuse to discharge her debt--they end up taking ALL of her money and her case ended up in criminal court with her spending a few years in prison.

Most bankruptcy proceedings aren't that dramatic. I know of another case in which a paralegal overlooked a $50,000 deposit on a bank statement. Rather than fire her on the spot, the lawyer just prayed the judge wouldn't notice.

Well, the judge noticed. When it was explained that the money was a lawsuit award that got left out of the petition by mistake, he still ruled that most of the money had to go to unsecured creditors. Later on, the paralegal and the lawyer talked over how they could have made such a huge mistake when the client should have been able to keep nearly all her money. It turns out that they both had asked on several occasions whether she had any money coming from a lawsuit, and the same had been noted on several different petition schedules. The client flat-out didn't tell them about the money, and by effectively being dishonest she lost her money. In contrast to the other story, she wasn't really trying to HIDE anything, whereas the woman sitting in jail was.

I see a signal difference between a court imprisoning a person because he wilfully fails to comply with a lawful order of the court and imprisoning a person who cannot satisfy a judgement.

A person who wilfully fails to comply with execution procedures being taken against him has no one to blame but himself for his position, and can secure his release by complying with the order to cooperate with the process. This is, I believe, an appropriate use of punitive jurisdiction.

But a person who, in full compliance, demonstrates no capacity to satisfy a debt does not expose himself to imprisonment. The court will leave the plaintiff with an empty judgement, and the debtor free to go.

i just hope I can't go to prison for possibly not being able to pay back college loans.

@Angel

No one proved in trial that he was withholding money, the judge simply decided he was and had him imprisoned indefinitely.

I'm guessing that there is more to the story than we've seen here. Potentially more than exists in court documents.

I don't get the impression that this happens very frequently. If I'm wrong, someone point me to a total count.

If the judge has the option of making him report to prison whenever he's not working, that might be a more effective measure.

There is some evidence that recidivism of repeat offenders is decreased when the punishment inconveniences them rather than takes away their liberty. The logic seems to be that a guy who knows he's up for 3 years in prison pretty much has the option of just dropping everything.

To hell with the job, the apartment, car payments, girlfriend, pets - that all just goes away.

A guy who finds out that he has to do 4 days at county, on the other hand, has to explain that to his boss and his girlfriend, knows that his pets will go hungry, knows that he might get into more crap with his landlord because lost wages mean he might not make rent on time, etc.