It was the wrong thread

[Tyrone Slothrop]

• BY HELEN PETERSON
  and KERRY BURKE
  DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
  
  
  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.
  ..........................
  
  "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."
  
  .....................
  
  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."
  

Daily News, via Steve Gilliard