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Quote :: 75-year-old woman suing 77-year-old ex over unpaid child support 34 years after divorce
By PHILIP MESSING
Last Updated: 11:40 AM, July 11, 2011
Posted: 1:32 AM, July 11, 2011

She's not getting mad, she's getting even -- 34 years later!

Frances Ragusa, 75, and her former husband, Philip, 77, were engaged in a nasty divorce almost 34 years ago, and their three kids have long since grown up -- but the Staten Island mom is still locked in a bitter Brooklyn court drama with her ex over nearly $100,000 in unpaid child support. The former couple has kept a battery of matrimonial lawyers employed since Gerald Ford was president. Then, several months ago, Fran, who lives in Tottenville, called her former spouse for the first time in more than 30 years to try to finally put an end to the feud.

Frances Ragusa (above) has been battling her ex, Philip (inset) for 34 years.

At issue is her ex-husband's alleged failure to pay a $14,393.57 child-support judgment as part of their divorce settlement in December 1977 after 17 years of marriage -- a figure that ballooned, with interest, to about $100,000. "I begged him to settle. I told him, 'Don't let this case go to trial, because I'm going to win punitive damages.' I told him, 'There is a legal judgment, and if you think I'm going to forget it, Phil, you're stuck on stupid,' " she recalled. Her bid for a truce did not go over well.

Upon hearing her voice, her ex, a retired carpenter and a resident of Belchertown, Mass., a suburb nearly 80 miles west of Boston, began crying, she claimed. Then, she said, he hung up. But Fran remained undeterred -- and last month, she gave a deposition in the case, which is being heard before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Leon Ruchelsman. "I want justice, that's all. My family did not deserve what he and the system did to us," she insisted. Her lawyer, John Russo, said the legal fight was one of the most peculiar he'd seen. "There's no doubt that this is an oddball case.

A judgment so old is not usually enforceable, but with a child-support judgment, it is," he said. Fran said her hard feelings stem in part from the fact that she was forced to go on welfare for a short while after the divorce. The former couple's hostilities were rekindled anew, she added, after the 1987 sale of their former home, at 1520 W. Sixth St. in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, for $350,000 -- because she was due $87,000 but never saw a dime.

She filed a flurry of lawsuits and appeals challenging that transaction -- and then discovered in 2002 that the original child-support judgment against her ex was still enforceable. To collect, she moved to put a lien on 139 Bay St. in Bensonhurst -- the home of her former mother-in-law, Jean Ragusa, which was then in the name of her ex-husband, Philip.

In September 2005, Jean Ragusa died -- and the Bay Street property was deeded to Philip's second wife, Connie Ragusa, court records add. Connie Ragusa died in the fall of 2009 -- and Fran has since sued her estate, which is being administered by Philip.His lawyer, Robert Androsiglio, of Manhattan, did not return a phone call for comment.