The following is from the the Bureau of Engraving and Printing website (http://www.bep.treas.gov/fact13.htm):
Section 102 of the Coinage Act of 1965
(Title 31 United States Code, Section 392)
provides in part:
" All coins and currencies of the United States, regardless of when coined or issued, shall be legal tender for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties and dues."
This statute means that you have made a valid and legal offer of payment of your debt when you tender United States currency to your creditor. However, there is no Federal statute which mandates that private businesses must accept cash as a form of payment. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.
– so I gather that if you can get your ex-wife to accept bags of pennies, then your alimony is legally paid, but if she only accepts burnt offerings, you’d have a hard time proving your payment obligation to the courts without a contract to that effect.
Is it legal to pay a big debt in small change?
I don’t imagine that a court would order you to pay alimony in burnt offerings, and it would probably up to them to order the manner of the alimony payments, not the ex-spouse. Otherwise I can see some irate person trying to pay their alimony in twinkies or by flinging a bag of pennys through the window in a drive-by coining.
As has been mentioned in numerous prior threads here (I suggest using the search engine), the concept of what is meant by ‘legal tender’ has changed with the years. Originally, it meant exactly what it sounds like: if you offered to pay with it, it was required that it be accepted. This was done to make coins acceptable (we’re talking a while ago, here). But over the years, the meaning of ‘legal tender’ has eroded. It is not presently clear exactly what the phrase means in the US; no one in the numerous threads has pointed to a court decision discussing it; state statutes are all over the map on the subject (some say a merchant must accept coins to a certain dollar limit, e.g. Missouri).