Liberty Seeker

Dave Foley was ordered to pay his ex-wife $17,700 a month in child support. That was five times what he actually earned. If he set foot in Canada, he would be arrested at the border. When he asked the judge how he’d feed his daughter from his second marriage, he says the court’s answer was simple: “They can rot in hell.” In 1997, Foley was starring on NBC’s NewsRadio and making about $1 million a year. That year, he separated from his first wife, Tabatha Southey. An Ontario judge set his payments at $17,700 a month, or $212,400 a year after taxes, based on his sitcom salary. Two years later, NBC canceled the show. His income dropped by nearly 80%. He went back to court to lower the payments. The judge said no. The court ruled he had made $1 million once, so he should keep paying like he still did. His ex-wife lived in a $2.5 million house on a park in Toronto. Foley rented a small loft in downtown LA. By 2011, he owed more than $500,000 in back payments. Ontario threatened to pull his passport and issued a warrant for his arrest if he came home. In the video below, Foley explains the math: “I’m paying about five times my income every month in child support, based on a show that hasn’t been on for 12 years.” He couldn’t work in Canada again until he landed a new sitcom in 2014 and had his paychecks garnished at the source. The case for the court: a parent shouldn’t get to slash support just because their career slows down. The case for Dave: locking a canceled actor into 1990s sitcom money under threat of prison is extortion. Should child support be tied to what you earn today, or the best year you ever had?