L.T. Jailed For Missing Child Support
Lawrence Taylor is behind in child-support payments because his income is not what it used to be, his lawyer said after the former New York Giants star was arrested in a roundup of deadbeat parents.
Taylor spent about 10 hours in jail and was released when a business associate paid $6,000 to cover an overdue payment.
The retired linebacker was alone at his Upper Saddle River home watching television when officers arrested him at 2 a.m. Tuesday, acting Bergen County Sheriff Jay Alpert said. Taylor was among 52 people arrested in the sweep.
Taylor owed the money to support a 7-year-old son who lives in New Jersey. He also pays $50,000 a year to former wife Deborah and their three children, who live in North Carolina, and $1,000 a month to another child in an "informal, private" arrangement, said his lawyer, Thomas Melani.
"He's just not making the money he was making before," Melani said.
In his last year in football in 1993, Taylor earned about $1 million in salary and more money off the field.
Melani estimated that Taylor now earns between $50,000 and $100,000 a year doing promotional work for Container Packaging Corp. in Paterson and selling memorabilia on home shopping channels.
He said Taylor missed support payments because he believed the money would be deducted from his earnings at the box company. Melani said the paperwork for the deductions somehow was not continued into 1998 after the last such payment in December.
Melani said Taylor failed to pay up despite a warning last week.
"L.T. has a habit of not following up on things until later," Melani said. "It's an embarrassment for him to be arrested and put in jail."
The arrest was the latest in a series of legal troubles for Taylor, who led the Giants to two Super Bowl titles and played in 10 Pro Bowls.
He pleaded guilty last summer to filing a false 1990 federal income tax return by failing to report $48,000 in income from a now-closed restaurant, L.T. Sports Pub in East Rutherford.
In May 1996, he was arrested in South Carolina on charges he tried to buy crack cocaine. That same year, Bergen County authorities applied for an arrest warrant after he failed to pay more than $50,000 for his three children in North Carolina.
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