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In the United States, it is reported that the percentage of marriages that fail is somewhere between 40 and 50 percent.  But married couples are not the only ones who split up and live apart.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides that 40 percent of all births are to unmarried couples.  Although the CDC does not specifically state how many of the unmarried couples live apart, it is fair […]

Grandparents who seek custody rights faced a setback this month when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a portion of the law that allowed grandparents to sue for custody when the children’s parents were separated for at least six months.  The Supreme Court, in D.P. and B.P. v. G.J.P. and A.P., No. 25 WAP 2016 (September 9, 2016), examined the grandparent standing law, that defines which grandparents may sue for custody rights.  The law, […]

Estranged parents in Pennsylvania might wonder whether a court is likely to award shared custody when there is parental conflict. Recently the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, in S.A.W. v. R.J.S. (non-precedential), No. 2214 MDA 2015 (August 5, 2016), heard an appeal from a Father hoping to overturn a shared custody decision. The Father argued that shared custody was not in the children’s best interests because the parents were incapable of cooperating with […]

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 […]