RSS
Home
No alimony for parent who kills child, panel recommends
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
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)
Related Articles:
Comments
