Ex-judge a real stiffOwes former wife & three kids 200G
BY NANCIE L. KATZ
Originally published on November 12, 2006
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
A former Brooklyn judge whose shady dealing got him booted off the bench has embarked on a new career as a deadbeat dad, the Daily News has learned.Ex-judge Reynold Mason has refused to pay more than $200,000 in court-ordered child support and alimony to his former wife and their three children, records show.Now his one-time spouse, who struggles to get by on $9.45 an hour at WalMart, her daughter and two sons are facing eviction from the Long Island home."I am so frustrated," Tessa Abrams Mason, 46 told The News. "This should not have been. There's no end. This guy is free. It's like he has a new life and it's okay."A former city Civil Court judge who later made the jump to state Supreme Court, Mason, 55, was removed from office in 2003 after the state Commission on Judicial Conduct found that he had pocketed escrow funds and illegally sublet his rent-stabilized apartment.The couple met in 1989 when he was a landlord-tenant lawyer. They married in 1993. A year later, she led his campaign to become the first Caribbean-American on the Brooklyn Civil Court. In 1997, he was elected to the Supreme Court, where he earned $136,700 a year.That same year, he left Tessa pregnant with their third child, she said. The couple was divorced in 2004 in Manhattan, where the case was moved to avoid any conflict of interest.Up until he was tossed from the bench, she said, child-support payments of $2,600 a month were being garnished from Mason's paycheck. A $600 monthly alimony order was never paid.Mason soon pulled up roots and moved to Georgia where he obtained a real estate license and today sells homes for a large brokerage.His real estate Web site highlights his former judicial and legal career, plus teaching stints at three New York colleges.But there's no mention of his deadbeat ways, Abrams Mason noted.His tab has risen to $200,000 in child support plus alimony, according to city records.He has ignored repeated judgments issued by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis.Reached by phone in Georgia last week, the ex-judge declined comment. "Send me a copy [of the article]," he said. "Say whatever you want."Abrams Mason said she has appealed to the city's child support enforcement unit and the city Law Department, which is supposed to alert officials in Georgia of Mason's debts.A Law Department official said that Georgia authorities have been notified.Yet Abrams Mason still struggles to live on $1,500 a month, and now must find another place to live because the small, affordable house a friend had rented her has been foreclosed."It's hurting our children," she said. "I can barely live on what I make. I can't take a second job, I have to take care of the kids."
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