Child support orders must be challenged in the proceeding in which they are entered, not in criminal proceedings to enforce them, according to the Court of Appeals decision in People v. Iannucci, No. 323604. While the defendant admitted that he had failed to comply with the child support order, he argued that, as a disabled veteran, his veteran’s disability benefits should not have been considered as income for purposes of calculating child support and that such an inclusion was illegal and contrary to federal law. The Court of Appeals held that these challenges to the validity of the underlying support order were not within the purview of the criminal proceeding, and thus, were not properly before the Court of Appeals in his appeal of his conviction in that proceeding. Additionally, the Court held that denying defendant redress in criminal court simply because he did not obtain a favorable result in the underlying civil proceeding is not a denial of due process, and that his five-day jail sentence is not constitutionally unusual under the Eighth Amendment.
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