I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir

One of the first things Sidebar learned in the military was the phrase, “immediate obedience to orders.” (Now, whether he ever absorbed the actual concept is arguable.)

Simply put, it means to do what you’re told, when you’re told, how you’re told.

But how is one to comply with an order that is never issued? Or one to which you are incapable of compliance? Sidebar doesn’t know and neither, apparently, does James Spears, an Army officer who was jailed briefly for violating a verbal court order that was yet to be entered.

“In December 2013, he was found in contempt of the February 2013 order, but then the contempt order was entered and the next month he was found in contempt of a contempt order that had never been entered,” said his attorney, Rebecca Watts of the Collins Family Law Group in Monroe.

Yes, folks, it is that complicated. But here’s the gist of it: Spears and his wife, Julie, divorced in 2008 after being married for more than 16 years and having three children together. Spears remarried that same year and subsequently had four children with his second wife.

Julie filed for child custody, child support, post-separation support, alimony, attorneys’ fees, and equitable distribution, and in a case that North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Donna Stroud calls “extremely complex” because of a “repeated pattern” of entry of orders months after the hearings upon which they were based and “changes in circumstances during the long lapses in time between hearings and entry of orders,” 7 ½ years of legal wrangling have left the situation as clear as mud.

Watts said her client was also first ordered to pay Julie more than his disposable income allowed, then later ordered to pay more than he actually earned.

“Here, the trial court held defendant in contempt for failure to do something he did not have the ability to do, based upon the trial court’s own findings,” Stroud wrote.

The trial judge, Ronald Chapman, suggested that Spears, to free up some money, should consider selling his beach house, having less federal income tax deducted from his paycheck and, oh, he probably shouldn’t have remarried so soon and started a new family.

In vacating the contempt order, Stroud noted that “this is not a case in which a defendant simply failed to pay anything at all.” For instance, from February 2013 to July 2013, Spears’ obligations totaled $35,000; he paid nearly $32,000.            Sidebar finds the number of dollars and orders and months in this case staggering, but Watts assured him that he isn’t alone.

“Even when family law is your thing … everyone I would explain this case to all along are like, ‘OK that makes no sense. that can’t possibly be happening,’” she said, adding that this will likely be ongoing for some time.

Whew. Sidebar hasn’t seen a Spears divorce this complicated since Kevin Federline and what’s-her-name called it quits.