Counseling clients to pay support by having their bank mail the support check can be a useful prophylactic for defending false claims of late payments. Most of my child support and alimony-paying clients hate paying through the courts. This hatred is completely justified. The 5% fee associated with paying support through the South Carolina clerks [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Child Support’
Unpublished opinion (doesn’t) make(s) new law on application of Schedule C guidelines
Floyd v. Morgan, 383 S.C. 469 , 681 S.E.2d 570 (2009) is possibly the worst published family law opinion to come out of the Supreme Court since I started writing this blog in April 2009. Not only did it unduly heighten the burden to modify child custody agreements–a decision since rectified in Miles v. Miles, [...]
In opinion with numerous oddities, Supreme Court approves active/passive approach to valuing marital property
In the October 31, 2011 opinion in Burch v. Burch, 395 S.C. 318, 717 S.E.2d 757 (2011), the South Carolina Supreme Court finally ratifies the passive versus active gain distinction the Court of Appeals has used for years in determining the valuation date for marital assets that change value between the date of filing and the [...]
United States Supreme Court finds that indigent defendant is not entitled to appointed counsel for child support civil contempt proceeding but still vacates South Carolina Supreme Court judgment of civil contempt
The June 20, 2011 United States Supreme Court opinion in Turner v. Rogers, 131 S.Ct. 2507 (2011), will radically alter the way the South Carolina Family Court handles child support (and alimony) enforcement. It’s about time. Turner’s challenge before the United States Supreme Court regarded the South Carolina Supreme Court’s determination that he was not entitled to [...]
Shouldn’t having custody of a child terminate child support per se?
Under S.C. Code § 63-3-530 (17) “orders for child support run until the child is eighteen years of age or until the child is married or becomes self-supporting.” It has been my experience that when a girl under the age of eighteen gives birth and keeps her child, the family court does not terminate whatever [...]
After Webb v. Sowell is any post eighteenth birthday child support constitutional?
In 2010, the South Carolina Supreme Court decision in Webb v. Sowell, 387 S.C. 328, 692 S.E.2d 543 (2010) found that South Carolina’s interpretation of S.C. Code § 63-3-530(17) to allow the family courts to order parents to pay college support for their adult children, but only when the parents were divorced, separated, or never [...]
Collecting child (or spousal) support from actual dead deadbeats
Due to recent changes in the law, it has become much easier to collect back child support from a deceased deadbeat’s estate. Here’s how to do it profitably without running afoul of the rules of professional conduct. Yesterday, for the first time in over a decade, I found myself in probate court. The goal: collect [...]
SCDSS v. Polite pits pro se against the bureaucracy in a philosophical argument about the nature of justice
An aphorism first year law students are told is “bad facts make bad law.” The January 19, 2011 Court of Appeals opinion in SCDSS v. Polite, 391 S.C. 275, 705 S.E.2d 78 (Ct. App. 2011), has particularly compelling “bad facts.” A pro se father’s failure to comply with strict pleading requirements resulted in a seventeen month delay in [...]