Since not many of us live in the private aircraft world we will keep this blog mercifully short. The Wall Street Journal on Friday April 12 reported on an audit of Boeing’s deployment of their fleet of executive aircraft. This seems to be related to CEO David Calhoun’s announced departure from the company as it arises from an internal audit. The key sentence in the article that resounded with us was a reminder that: “When executives use a company [aircraft] for personal travel, it typically counts as taxable income.” It has been a while since we got into the weeds on this topic but back then ..read more

The news out of Harrisburg is that both chambers of the General Assembly have passed what is termed House Bill 917, formally the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act. This comes almost five years after the Revised Uniform Arbitration Act went into effect for non family cases. The family law version is, of course, targeted to family law cases. Arbitration has been around since the Divorce Code was amended in 1980. It’s an alternative to the slow and sometimes unsteady judicial process found in your local courthouse. Rather than rely upon your state and county paid courts to decide your divorce, y ..read more

We promised not to turn this into a gun blog but in a country where half of all families own guns and the half that do own a lot of them, the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen  (597 U.S. 1) is going to be kicking around for the next few years for reasons that become apparent from the Superior Court’s precedential ruling in Com. v. McIntyre on March 25. This all begins in 2000 when Jonathan McIntyre was convicted of burglary, robbery and aggravated assault. After being paroled in 2018 he went to live with an uncle in Chester ..read more

Early in this writer’s career lawyers used to have to be careful about possible capital gains tax on the sale of a personal residence. Before 1997 the exclusion was $125,000 per spouse and $250,000 if the taxpayers filed jointly. In 1997 Congress doubled the exclusion to $250,000 and $500,000 for joint filers. That was a big exclusion; then. It doesn’t look so big now and in our modern world, you and your soon to be ex may want to think about that before closing out your separation with a decree of divorce. Because, to claim the $500,000 exclusion you need to be married in the year when the ho ..read more

It’s an unfortunate week to make the comparison but it is an apt one for the very reason we saw as the tragedy in Baltimore unfolded early Tuesday morning. Then, a ship appears to have temporarily lost power and control, causing it to strike the Key Bridge and doing massive damage to lives and property. You, the client are on the larger voyage called “life.” Sometimes that voyage takes you into places you didn’t want to go such as divorce. You still run the ship and decide the destinations. But a divorce lawyer is kind of the river pilot who takes you through the often choppy and unreliable wa ..read more

Just about everyone who has tried a custody case has been called upon to present a “school choice” dispute. These are the ones where Springfield High is pitted against Bayside High or Chilton Prep in the race to see which school is most likely to produce a better child. These are often illusory battles that rarely correlate to the ultimate outcomes but if you are a judge trying to assess what’s in the child’s best interests, it is evidence you need to hear. They present evidentiary problems for the litigants. There are lots of services out there that profess to evaluate schools. Two of the mor ..read more

This writer has a home outside of Philadelphia that was once owned by a motion picture director of minor note named Irvin “Shorty” Yeaworth. Yeaworth became known for producing the early sci-fi hit the “Blob” in 1958 but two years earlier he produced a movie about how confusing life was for those between 12 and 20 titled “The Flaming Teenage.” The NPR program of March 26 is titled “How to Better Understand Teenagers.” Moderator Jenn White informs us at the outset that the appellation “Teenager” did not exist until the 1940s. The title came about as America adopted laws mandating full time scho ..read more

There are some fascinating topics related to divorce swimming out there in the electronic world. And one we just saw is a new phenomenon where couples are deciding it’s over in every sense except the official one called divorce. There are some factors contributing to this. The first is the high cost of housing. You and your unhappy mate are occupying 2,500 square feet with three bedrooms and a fair market value of $600,000. You each look around and see that if you split up, there is almost nothing on the market for $300,000, let alone two $300,000 dwellings. The other thing today is that we ar ..read more

We have done a lot of complaining lately about some pretty bizarre cases. Then, along comes Schultz v. Schultz and Passetti; an important case that merits being published because it makes important law and is a credit to the litigants and the courts. Suffice to say those accolades don’t much occur in the litigation world generally, but the child custody world especially. The facts also reflect a new trend in affordable housing, called Grandma’s. It used to be we went to Grandma’s on Thanksgiving largely because there was turkey and the “Horse knew the way to carry the sleigh.” But in a world w ..read more

We just posted a piece about how parents can get into financial trouble while trying to cushion their children from the harsh reality that divorced couples have less to contribute to expensive child activities. Parental guilt can often really tax the gelt if parents don’t reign in what they spend on childhood indulgences, masquerading as “necessities.” Monday’s Wall Street Journal offered another place where kids are at risk and may be harmed unless separated parents coordinate to protect them. The topic was cyber-security; a topic of some importance when we see that teenagers are spending a t ..read more