Brothers

Vincent Edward Brothers, plaintiff and appellant in this case, is also the defendant in a pending capital murder prosecution. The jury has found him guilty and has recommended that he receive the death penalty. Sentencing has not yet taken place. At the time of the killings, Brothers was subject to a child support order. After he was taken into custody on the murder charges, Brothers liquidated his assets and used the proceeds to hire an attorney, who took most of the money as a retainer and placed it in his client trust account. The court in this case then modified the child support order, basing the new monthly amount on the interest that could have been earned on the proceeds of the liquidated assets rather than on Brothers’s income before his arrest. It directed that the current amount due, as modified, be paid to the mother from the client trust account. It also required Brothers to use funds from the account to post a security deposit for future support payments, to be held by the Kem County Department of Child Support Services and disbursed monthly. The deposit was to cover all payments that would become due during the two years remaining before the child reached…