A Bad Economy Can Land You In CT's Debtors Prison

While the founders of our great nation abhorred the notion of a debtors prison, special interests from several areas of society pushed legislators hard to draft laws that force you to pay up or go to jail.

While no court in this great state would ever dare to use the term "debtors prison" they instead speak the legalese equivalent of "contempt of court." When it comes to paying up "Contempt of Court" and "Debtors Prison" is essentially the same thing. Both represent an individual going to jail for owing money.

This is particularly of grave concern in a bad economic period, because your loss of a job, decline in business, or failure to sell your home could very easily translate to a criminal act.

At the federal level the top jailers are the IRS and the contemptible failure to pay your income tax, file on time, or not report to the agencies satisfaction. However do not be too concerned about the law, because there is no law even requiring a person to pay an income tax but the IRS is all about collecting. According to several experts on the IRS and Tom Cryer a constitutional attorney "there is no law even requiring a person to pay." However do not tell that to Ed and former CT Citizen Elaine Brown a dentist in NH now in Federal Prison on tax charges. No one is exempt from the tax mafia not even U.S. Congressman James Trafficante who is in prison for not paying the tax.

At the state level we have similar but different circumstances. There is the constant flood of divorced people who get regularly incarcerated for not paying, or not paying enough child support, alimony, or what ever the judge orders in court. The process of having a court threaten you with debtors prison will last as long as your contentious other decides to subjugate you to the draconian logic of the judicial officer brandishing his gavel. Our legislators in Hartford drafted the debtors prison legislation under the belief that this is the only way to get people to pay up.

The harsh choice of having a judicial gavel pointed at you demanding your "money or your freedom" has also got the attention of the credit card companies who want to get in on the collection process. With millions of Americans having negative savings for the first time in history, the risk and exposure to the big banks is growing exponentially. Foreclosures, are the first hardship for homeowners, the next is bank Levy's and liens on anything remaining of value, and the IRS also jumps in to tax you on loan money you saved due to the bank selling your home at a loss. In many cases a bank will try to insulate against these losses by going to court and getting a court order against your bank account/s resulting in you bouncing checks, and missing other payments.

These court orders take no mercy on those who receive them, courts will allow banks to take Veterans checks, Social Security checks, and force the elderly, sick, and poor to lose the only access to the few dollars they have. The Federal poverty level of $14,000 per year has been routinely confiscated to the point where the sick and elderly have been dumped on the street for the benefit of collecting a debt. The panic to collect is spreading to all aspects of society, including our hospitals, who ask us about every asset we own upon signing in, and the brazen new generation of attorneys so eager to represent these big establishments to quell their own financial woes.

The need to collect a debt is something I respect as a business man, as I have several customer debts of my own that I try to collect, but under no circumstance is the money I am owed so important that I could stand to ruin a persons life over a few bucks.

The very nature of a debtors prison is abhorrent to me, and what is most alarming is when people who owe money are not even afforded the protections of living at the Federal poverty level. When a court of law would go so far as to confiscate a persons Social security check, or veterans check to satisfy a corporation I take issue with the lack of protections afforded society.

It is my opinion that the entire idea of "debtors prison" has no place in America, CT, or anywhere where freedom rings. Nor do I believe that a person should be stripped of their ability to afford the basics of food and minimal shelter, because of a bad debt situation. People and corporations should be accountable to their own lending mistakes, and courts ought not be used as collection agencies for special interests and big corporations.