Blog

This month, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania accepted a custody case involving a constitutional challenge to the grandparent custody law.  In D.P. and B.P. v. G.J.P. and A.P. (Ponko), No. 25 WAP 2015, the custody case bypassed the Superior Court, going straight up to the Supreme Court after a Westmoreland County trial court held that the grandparent custody statute was unconstitutional. Under the current law (23 Pa.C.S. § 5325), in effect since 2011, grandparents […]

In re Baby S., 2015 Pa.Super. 244 (November 23, 2015) Sherri Shepherd, one of the hosts of the ABC-TV daytime talk show “The View,” and her ex-husband Lamar Sally were married for just over a year when they arranged a surrogate to bear their second child.  Having previously given birth to a child who was 15 weeks premature (by her first husband), Sheppard was deemed to be incapable of a natural pregnancy, […]

E.R.L. v. C.K.L., 2015 Pa.Super. 220 (October 19, 2015) In this published decision, the Superior Court examined a child support order in which the trial court had granted an upward deviation from the guidelines, and ordered the father to pay his share of all extracurricular activities in which the children might participate.  The Court affirmed, holding that Father’s inheritance, while not counting as income for support purposes, justified an child […]

When divorced or unmarried parents who owe child support fail to report their income to the court, the consequences can be severe.  That’s what happened in Cortes v. Cortes (non-precedential), No. 624 WDA 2014 (Pa.Super., September 3, 2015).  The mother and father in this case were divorced in Texas in 2000 after a twenty year marriage.  There was a child support order running in Allegheny County, where mother moved with […]

Parents who receive trust distributions may have a duty to disclose the amount and source, even if the trust distributions do not necessarily constitute income for child support purposes.  That’s one of the issues raised by Eisenman-Gomez v. Gomez, No. 1596 WDA 2014 (August 11, 2015), a recent decision of the Superior Court that should have been published, but wasn’t. In Eisenman-Gomez, the mother of two minor children failed to disclose nearly […]

There is often suspicion when a business that would be marital property fails shortly after marital separation, particularly if the owner spouse subsequently starts a new business.  This is the situation that the Superior Court addressed in its recent opinion, Weisman v. Weisman, Nos. 1471 EDA 2014 (July 14, 2015), a non-precedential decision. Husband was the founder of PRN Healthcare Services, a company that provided skilled and non-skilled nursing care in Montgomery […]