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LAM v. CR (2012 PA Super 45, February 27, 2012) – Superior Court affirmed decision to allow Mother to relocate from York County to Boston. No majority opinion was issued, but Judge Donohue published a dissenting opinion. In her opinion, Judge Donohue criticized the majority’s holding that the 2011 Child Custody Act did not apply. Mother filed a complaint for custody on November 3, 2010, with a request to relocate, […]

In CMK v. KEM (March 27, 2012), the Superior Court took up the case of a mother who followed the notice procedures for custody relocation under the 2011 custody statute. She sent a notice to her child’s father, advising him that she intended to move from Grove City, Mercer County, to Albion, Erie County, a distance of 68 miles. Father objected to the relocation, and the trial court held a […]

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 […]

One of the most-respected judges to sit in Family Division here in Allegheny County, Hon. Eugene B. Strassburger, Jr., recently ascended to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. His first published opinion in a Family Division matter was released this month, demonstrating remarkable judicial restraint. In BJD v. DLC, 2011 Pa.Super. 74 (April 11, 2011), Judge Strassburger considered a custody case in which both parents and their child had moved away […]

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 It was undisputed in this case that the mother had withdrawn from the workforce five years earlier in order to home-school the parties’ children, which she continued to do up […]