Blessedly, this is not a frequent event. And as law has migrated from handwritten to typewritten to telecopied and emailed agreements one might think this kind of dispute would be headed to the dungeons of history. But yesterday brought King v. Driscoll a precedential three judge ruling from the Superior Court, citable as 2023 Pa.Super. 95.             This is a commercial case involving a dispute over a restaurant sale. But, Pennsylvania law is clear (except when it isn’t)* that the law of contracts applies even to domestic relations agre ..read more

              Earlier today I read an article in an on-line news journal about clients who spend inordinate time on the phone with their lawyers and the consequence for both lawyer and client. It’s a great topic because most humans don’t employ lawyers every day and those who do are experienced consumers who avoid mixing business with pleasure when the one party on the line charges hundreds of dollars an hour.               For family law clients it’s especially har ..read more

Yes, it’s a family law blog but what makes this field so interesting is how many ways people can find to get themselves in trouble. Usually, folks know the risks they get into when they borrow out their 401(k) or trade their S&P balanced fund for bitcoin. Alas, even when they proceed innocently and seemingly in good faith, things can become crazy complicated because, after all, “Who needs a lawyer to buy a house, right?”             Once upon a time, which is to say before the mid-1980s, almost no mortals bought or sold houses without ..read more

             Legislatures and courts these days are devoting lots of energy to what parents can and can’t regulate in their households and who is “responsible.” Florida just passed a law making it a crime for parents to seek treatment for transgender kids. For that offense the state will enter your homestead and perhaps take your child. But not that long ago mandatory masks in schools and/or vaccination of children was an abominable invasion of parental rights.             &n ..read more

            On May 11,  a federal court in Richmond, Virginia ruled that 18 year old’s have a right to own firearms regardless of state and federal laws limiting that right because the right to possess firearms is guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The case is called Fraser v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. This is the latest chapter in a series of cases that began with New York State Rifle Associations, Inc. v. Bruen, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022.       &nb ..read more

Smith v. Confer is a relocation case decided by the Superior Court on May 3. It’s non precedential but it’s a wild one. The parents of the child shared custody from August 2016 until August 2019 when mother decided to relocate to Texas from Mercer County.  Her initial petition requested custody in Texas during school breaks but she later amended to seek primary physical custody in Texas. Father promptly filed an emergency petition to secure custody and was awarded primary custody subject to mother’s filing a proper petition to relocate under 23 Pa.C.S. 5337.        ..read more

A few weeks ago I spoke with privacy expert, Mark McCreary out of Fox’s Philadelphia office about the legal implications of artificial intelligence, and in particular, ChatGPT. In that short period of time, the world has settled into this new era of AI assistance and seemingly every company is rolling out some form of AI service and product, Mark’s comments can help give a baseline understanding of how AI may impact the legal community, legal services, and what to keep in mind as AI becomes further ingrained into our work and commercial settings ..read more

The headline is a bit of a teaser. It’s not that your lawyer is holding back. It’s more likely you just aren’t asking the right questions. Long ago, when this writer first started to practice custody always went to mom and dad got Saturday to Sunday from noon to noon. But as women went into the workforce and families became reliant on two incomes whether divorced or not, the amount of custodial time allocated to fathers kept increasing. Thus, in the past twenty years we have witnessed a decided trend toward equal physical custody or something quite close to equal. Some counties in Pennsylvania ..read more

Even for the most diligent political observer and educated voter, judicial races in Pennsylvania can be difficult to decipher. Unlike candidates for other public offices, the judicial candidates get certified to run on both parties’ tickets, do not often engage in the same level of campaigning seen for more purely political offices, and may not be commonly known to the public. In an effort to educate voters and shed some light on the qualifications of candidates, many local bar associations have some form of a judicial committee designed to vet candidates and offer recommendations or assessmen ..read more

In my role as the host of PBA Family Law Section’s podcast “Law in the Family,” I spoke with Helen Casale about the recent Superior Court case, Glover v. Junior which was decided as a non-precedential decision in February. This case involves the question as to whether parentage of a child can be established by contract. The facts of this case are unique insofar as Glover and Junior, a same-sex couple who were legally married in 2021 and pursued a family through IVF using Glover’s eggs and a sperm donor. Subsequent to the ensuing pregnancy, however, they broke-up; began divorce proceedings, wit ..read more