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Linda Calbi
Parents who kill a child won't receive alimony under a bill endorsed today by a state legislative panel in Trenton.
A Bergen County case of filicide helped prompt N.J.'s Senate and Assembly judiciary committees to endorse the measure, which would include parents who abandon or neglect their children.
One of the bills uanimously recommended by the panel was prompted by the case of Matt Calbi, a 14-year-old boy from Old Tappan who was beaten and kicked to death by his mother in a drunken rage.
A state appeals court in 2007 found that the circumstances, as outlined in the current law, didn't warrant stopping Linda Calbi from receiving alimony from her ex, Chris, despite the boy's death.
"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," Chris Calbi wrote in papers filed in Superior Court in Hackensack.
In their decision, the three appeals court justices invited state lawmakers to change the statute:
"Nothing in this opinion prevents the Legislature from amending the alimony statute. But we do not read the present statute nor the ... case law to create that automatic disqualification."
The reform bill endorsed today specifically would deny alimony to anyone convicted of murder, manslaughter, criminal homicide, death by auto, aggravated assault if the crime was committed after the divorce or dissolution of the marriage/civil union.
Also endorsed by the panel in Trenton was a law that would eliminate inheritance rights for a parent who abused, abandoned, neglected, endangered, or sexually assaulted the child.
Currently, the surviving parents split the inheritance, regardless of whether one of them abused him or her.
The Calbi story
Chris and Linda Calbi got married in 1986 and were divorced 15 years later. Following a fight with his mother in August 2003, Matt Calbi died of internal bleeding from a beating. Chris Calbi continued having to pay his ex-wife because alimony had been determined entirely on the basis of need and ability to pay.
A judge temporarily suspended the amount but ordered Calbi to pay arrears into her prison account. The appeals court later suspended the arrears payments while granting Linda Calbi the ability to collect after she'd served her time.
Calbi, 51, was released last November after serving her three-year sentence.
(Photo: Courtesy New Jersey State Department of Corrections)
Comments
While I understand a jusicial system that tires and sentences as the way to achieve justice, in this case it's so ABSURD that english is not equipped with the adjectives needed to describe it! This woman is sick but her sickness is not without ability to be in a constant state of cure which she chose to ignore...while some may say she is sick, she is weak, she is blah, blah, blah she killed her son. That is something she will need to deal with throughout her life on this earth and beyond....but the boy's Father NEEDS to separate himself from her, the pain she inflicted and try to begin a life forward. He should not be punished in any way by either alimony or having to communicate with her through lawyers. He will NEVER be the same person he was before his son was killed. We are NEVER the same people we were the day before losing a child. A child that we loved from the first thought of conceiving him or her. How ridiculous that this man has had to endure the worst tragedy and then the beaurocratic system .... I wish him peace and the ability to have a life post this unchangeable and life changing event.
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