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Last week I posted about methods of paying child support in Pennsylvania. This week I want to highlight a couple of electronic methods of paying child support, which might be useful for payors who are self-employed, own a business, or must submit supplemental payments in addition to a wage attachment against their salary. In Pennsylvania, all support payments must be submitted to the Pennsylvania State Collection and Disbursement Unit, which […]

“How do I pay my child support?” is a question I am frequently asked by clients. Pursuant to federal and state law, child support orders must be paid via wage attachment unless the support recipient agrees in writing to waive it. Even if the wage attachment is waived, the payments must be submitted to the Pennsylvania State Collection and Disbursement Unit in Harrisburg (which we call “SCDU” or “Ski-Doo”). Federal […]

Once again this fall, I am the course planner, author and lecturer for the child support portion of Family Law Update, an annual survey of the latest developments in Pennsylvania’s child support law and procedures. A copy of my PowerPoint presentation is available here. While there weren’t many new precedents published this year by the Pennsylvania courts, there have been some meaningful changes to the procedural rules and child support […]

The Pennsylvania child support guidelines were modified on August 3, 2011, effective September 3, 2011.

Child support contempt defendants are not entitled to court-appointed representation even in cases where incarceration is threatened, says the U.S. Supreme Court, but the state courts must follow procedures that ensure the fundamental fairness of contempt proceedings. In Turner v. Rogers, Docket No. 10-10, June 20, 2011, the Court considered the rights of a South Carolina defendant who had been held in contempt of a child support order five times […]

In Kent v. Kent (March 18, 2011), the Superior Court of Pennsylvania rejected a parent’s argument that she should be entitled to collect alimony for a period of eleven years so that she could continue to homeschool the parties’ minor children. It was undisputed in this case that the mother had withdrawn from the workforce five years earlier in order to home-school the parties’ children, which she continued to do up […]