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Pay ... or Else!

By ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |
May 25, 2004

If you have not heard of a writ of capias ad satisfaciendum, you are not alone. The writ is an obscure instrument of judgment that creditors can use to incarcerate debtors who have the means to pay but refuse to do so.

Warren Matthei, a stockbroker from New Jersey, is now in the Essex County Jail under a writ obtained by Ellen Marshall, a solo practitioner from West Orange, NJ. She wants payment for Matthei's divorce work over a decade ago. He has been sitting in jail since 1996 for not paying child support and other debts. Matthei claims he no longer has money to pay Marshall, but he has not provided the necessary accounting to prove it, creating a stalemate at least until November, his next scheduled court date. Marshall is not waiting. On March 3, she filed a federal suit in Newark, NJ, against High Swartz Roberts & Seidel, a venerable Norristown, PA, firm whose associate, Ronald Fenstermacher, prepared trust and commercial documents for Matthei in 2001 while Matthei was in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

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