http://www.nydailynews.com/04-13-200...p-256276c.html
Pulpit won't pay
BY HELEN PETERSON
and KERRY BURKE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The deadbeat:
Simon Ajose
The ex-wife: Stephanie Lopez
A Brooklyn judge wants a deadbeat dad to choose the law over God - telling him to use his legal degree to make money to support his kids, and postpone plans to become a minister.
The bizarre intersection of church and state was revealed yesterday in a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Sunshine.
The judge held the wanna-be clergyman in contempt for being "voluntarily unemployed" and stiffing his ex-wife out of $40,000 in back child support.
The trouble started when Ivy League grad Simon Ajose left his six-figure job as a lawyer, stopped paying child support and enrolled in divinity school.
Sunshine told Ajose, 38, to put down his Bible - for now - and belly up to the state bar and put his Columbia Law School degree to use.
Ajose "has chosen not to meet any of his support obligations nor does he provide any reasonable excuse, at this juncture, for not filing the necessary papers for admission to the New York State bar," Sunshine wrote.
"Once admitted and once earning a living, there would be nothing to stop him from going to night school to gain an additional degree in divinity while still meeting his obligations to support his two young children," the judge added.
Ajose, the reluctant lawyer, represented himself in the case. Last night, Ajose refused to comment on the judge's decision or say whether he would return full-time to the practice of law. But he defended his record as a father.
"I love my children more than anything in this world," said Ajose, who lives with his mother in Brooklyn. "I have done the best I possibly can to provide for them. I feel that nonmonetary contributions should be taken into account."
Asked about his ex-wife, Stephanie Lopez, he invoked the Bible, saying, "Jesus says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
The judge's decision answered the prayers of Lopez, who said she had to pull the couple's 8- and 11-year-old sons out of private schools because of the support cutoff.
Lopez, of Brooklyn, said she was shocked when she heard her ex wanted to be a preacher and had enrolled in a local divinity school. "What ran through my mind is, 'You are kidding me,'" said Lopez, who was married to Ajose for 10 years before they split about five years ago.
Lopez said she met Ajose while both worked in the record industry, and supported him - emotionally and financially - when he decided to go back to college and then to law school.
Ajose graduated near the top of his class at Columbia, she said, and landed a $100,000-a-year job at a top law firm. He failed the bar exam in October 2001. He eventually passed it and took a temp job before giving up law all together, she said.
Lopez's lawyer, Amy Saltzman, said Ajose was ordered to pay $875 a month in support, plus other expenses, when he was a first-year legal associate.
After he quit work he got the amount lowered - but didn't pay it anyway, she said.
Saltzman said Sunshine's order will likely help get his support amount raised again, based on his earnings ability - a minimum of $100,000 a year.
The judge did not say what penalty he'd mete out for the contempt, but Ajose could face a fine or jail time or be ordered to pay his ex-wife's legal fees.
"When you have skills you just can't stop doing the work you've done during the marriage," Saltzman said. "This husband is intentionally not practicing law."
