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Not paying a judgement against you is not contempt of court.

In the Yahoo Article, the woman arrested failed to show up to multiple court hearings, despite receive notice at the proper address. The fact that the court hearings related to a debt was incidental. Blame shoddy journalism.

The second one, is a blog post, which actually talks about something entirely different from a debtor's prison. It refers to a "debtor's exam", which is a fancy way of saying that your finances are examined to see if you can afford to pay the debt. No prison time involved. Intrusive maybe, but warranted if you haven't paid the debt at issue.




Plenty of Judges treat not paying a judgement against you as contempt of court. Even though it is not supposed to happen, it often does.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/06mon4.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/return-of-debtors-...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870439650457620...

Debtor's prison is alive and well in America.




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