I was recently reminded of a strange alimony case. H. Beatty Chadwick has been in prison since April 1995 on a contempt of court charge because he refuses to pay his wife court- ordered alimony. He claims that he lost the money in an investment and cannot pay her the alimony. (I never found out how much money he was ordered to pay. He is thought to be hiding $2.5 million in marital assets.) Whether or not he is telling the truth is not the issue; let's assume that he does have the money and he simply refuses to pay it. Do you think he SHOULD be imprisoned for all this time because of his refusal to pay? Or do you think he should be freed, since he obviously is never going to give up the money?

*For those interested in this bizarre case, here is a little more backround information on the case:
"[His wife, Barbara] announced she would leave H. Beatty Chadwick. She says he vowed she would never see a dime. He used a term unfamiliar to her, she says: Scorched earth.
"It sounded so comical to me," she says. "It's when you burn everything so that the enemy gets nothing." She filed for divorce in Delaware County on Nov. 23, 1992.
[Barbara's] high-powered divorce lawyer, Albert Momjian... showed the courts documentation that Chadwick's money wound up in Gibraltar, with some of it briefly returning to accounts in the United States, and eventually to Luxembourg and Panama. But that was [13] years ago. Momjian says the cash could be anywhere by now... Chadwick insisted he could not pay up because the cash was no longer his. A county judge found him in contempt, and on Nov. 2, 1994, he was ordered imprisoned. The deal from the courts: Give up the money and go free... [Barbara] says she doubts she will ever see the money - in any case she owes an enormous chunk of it to her lawyers.
Still: Why? Suppose Chadwick does control the money - a sum that, responsibly invested, has probably grown past $8 million (euro6.3 million) by now, the courts estimate. [This is the estimated amount as of 2006.] Why not give it up and get out?"

There is an entire site devoted to Chadwick's cause: http://freebeattychadwick.blogspot.com/