Spousal Support.

Contempt/imprisonment to enforce spousal support in dissolution of marriage is a judicially created remedy. Fla. Stats. Chapter 61 does not grant authority for that remedy.

You have heard it a thousand times. Payers say spousal support is a debt. No, family courts say, it is a duty of a husband to support his wife (Phelan v. Phelan, 12 Fla. 449 (1868)). Since 1995-96 the judiciary has been wrong in caselaw and public policy.

In 1995, caselaw was changed to eliminate the duty of spousal support. The Florida Supreme Court in Connor v. Southwest Fla. Reg'l Med. Ctr., Inc., 668 So. 2d 175, 177 (Fla. 1995) in a broad, non-restrictive, noncontextual holding, abrogated the doctrine of necessaries. Justices Overton and Wells, in a broad, non-restrictive, non-contextual dissent said the effect of the majority opinion was to eliminate the duty of a spouse to care for one another. The effect, concluded by two Supreme Court justices, "... appears to shift the policy of this state by, in effect, requiring each spouse to take care of himself or herself. It also reduces the...