Former Colts linebacker Clint Session said he’d pay his child support obligations, if he had the money.
But to what degree he can afford it is up to varying interpretations.
According to Stephen Holder of the Indianapolis Star, Session’s attorney has filed a motion for rehearing after a Florida judge ordered the former linebacker jailed if he doesn’t come up with more than $380,000 in support for his disabled daughter.
“If I can just get these numbers corrected,” Session said, “I would do whatever I can to pay the corrected amount.”
In December 2014, a judge ruled he owed $6,917 a month, plus back payments of $120,256 for his daughter (split into $2,000 installements) plus a $119,417 lump sum for medical and therapeutic expenses.
Session earned good money in the NFL, but says he doesn’t have it now.
He admitted giving his parents $5 million in 2011, but said it was a gift and has been mostly spent. He claims income of $3,000 a month from a smoothie business he owns in Indianapolis. He signed a five-year, $30 million contract with the Jaguars in 2011, but his lawyer said that following a career-ending string of concussions, he only earned about $9 million of that, which keeps him from affording his current payments.
“I had plans on making $30 million and I wanted to take care of my parents,” Session said. “I gave them that money.”
His attorney contends Session should owe $103,890, and says he paid $81,300 of that in recent years.
There are many levels of problems to this story, beginning with the fact Session hasn’t seen his daughter in two years (despite what he claims are efforts to do so).
But it also points to how the huge contract figures players and agents like to crow about when signing are seldom reflections of what they’ll truly earn unless things don’t go perfectly for players — which they practically never do.