As many readers of Men’s News Daily are already aware, a New Jersey appeals court recently ruled that an ex-wife who brutally killed the son she had with her ex-husband does not automatically lose the right to collect alimony from him.
Linda Calbi is currently in prison, serving a 3-year term for beating her 14-year-old son Matt to death. She will be eligible for parole in November 2008.
Chris Calbi and Linda Calbi were divorced in 2001. They had been married for 15 years and had two children. Apparently he had been paying $3,183 in alimony. I don’t know what the child support was.
A short while after Matt was killed, Chris cut off the alimony. As he stated in papers filed asking for termination of the payments, “She took the life of her oldest son, scarred her younger son for the rest of his life, and tore the fabric of my soul from me. To reward this evil and violent woman by allowing her . . . to derive a financial benefit from the family she destroyed . . . can only be described as a perversion of our justice system.â€Â
According to Legal tussle: Should killer get alimony by Kibret Markos, “A judge ordered him to continue making payments, then later interrupted alimony for the period that Linda Calbi is incarcerated. But Chris Calbi’s arrears had risen to more than $40,000 by then, and the judge ordered him to pay $400 a month to his ex-wife’s account.â€Â
Thus, Chris Calbi is legally obligated to make a check each month to the woman who killed their son. When she gets out of prison, he faces the prospect of having that amount return to the original, much heftier sum. He also faces the prospect of her attempting to get visitation or even custody of the son still alive.
Some people might think I’m hypocritical for finding this grotesque since I live primarily (although not entirely) on alimony. However, I didn’t kill my ex-husband’s kid!
This case reminds me a lot of one I previously read about in which a woman had sexual intercourse with a man while he was drunk and unconscious, then bragged to some friends of hers that she had saved herself a trip to the sperm bank. When a man has sex with a drunk and unconscious woman, few people have trouble calling it what it is: rape.
The woman who had sex with an unconscious man in lieu of going to the sperm bank got pregnant, as she intended, and then sued the man for child support. The court ordered him to pay it.
A man making payments each month to the killer of his child while another man makes payments each month to his rapist — Franz Kafka could not have come up with scenarios more thoroughly Kafkaesque!
How can the case of Chris and Linda Calbi be resolved? As a menace to children, she should never be allowed to see her surviving son. However, as the non-custodial parent, she may be held responsible for child support. The court could set her child support obligation at the same amount as the alimony, thus wiping out the alimony obligation. Or it could go one better and terminate the alimony while requiring that she pay child support. Regarding the second case, that the woman raped the man should mean that she is assumed to be an unfit mother and the child should have been automatically removed from her custody. The biological father should have been given an opportunity for custody and, if he did not want it, the baby should have been put up for adoption.
Franz Kafka created brilliantly absurd situations. The American court system should not be going him one better.
