January 5, 2023

Former state senator files bankruptcy in effort to get out of jail for child support non-payment

Jeremy Hutchinson on Friday, his second day in jail, filed for voluntary bankruptcy and appealed the contempt order that incarcerates him indefinitely to the Arkansas Supreme Court, measures that should get him out of jail within a week at most without having to pay $524,000 in child support arrears for his freedom, his lawyer said Friday.

Clinton Lancaster, the Benton lawyer who brought a successful paternity action in Independence County against presidential son Hunter Biden, took on Hutchinson’s case Friday. Lancaster said Hutchinson’s Chapter 13 bankruptcy declaration carries a federal stay of the state-court divorce proceedings that landed Hutchinson in jail on Thursday.

“You can’t put people in jail for their debts once they file for bankruptcy … so [release] is a matter of time,” Lancaster said, describing Hutchinson’s incarceration as “debtor’s prison.”https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/dec/31/former-state-senator-files-bankruptcy-in-effort/”We want to make it clear that Jeremy is not running from having to pay his debts. He has incurred a lot of judgments and things of that nature and he just needs relief.”

Bankruptcy will allow Hutchinson, 48, to discharge some portions of the divorce-related debt ascribed to him by the court, but not what he owes in child support and not whatever financial penalties he incurs

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