Alimony and the 13th Amendment.

• Author: Martyak, Stephen
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

Reiss and Walsh's Mathematics for Computing Imputed Income (July/August), while a thorough and cogent analysis of the improper imputation of income and its effect on alimony awards, erroneously reinforces the myth that imputation of income is lawful. Chapter 61 alimony provisions which permit the courts to impute income violates the U.S. Constitution's 13th Amendment ban on involuntary servitude.

United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 942 (1988), a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court was faced with the problem of defining involuntary servitude in a criminal civil rights violation case demonstrates the applicability of the 13th Amendment to alimony statutes and explicitly to the concept of imputed income to affect alimony.

Servitude is a condition "in which a person lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life." Id. at 968. The Court held that involuntary servitude "necessarily means a condition...in which the victim is forced to work for [another] by the use or threat of physical restraint or physical injury, or by the use or threat of coercion through law or the legal process." Id. at 952. Also, "we find that in every case in which this [c]ourt has found a condition of involuntary servitude, the victim had no available choice but to work or be subject to legal sanction." Id. at 943. This is precisely what 61.08 alimony provision...