In the 17 years I have been doing this blog, I do a year-end summary of published family court opinions. 2025 has a shocking new low in published opinions—four—with no published opinions since March.
Two of the four opinions were from an appeal I filed. One loss: Clark v. Clark(where the petition for a writ of certiorari was denied today), affirming a mother could be held in contempt for disparaging the father in the presence of the child by self published a book that was highly critical of father. One victory: Swing v. Swing, which (I think) held that a successive Rule 59 motion tolled the time to appeal if it was brought by the other party as that party’s first Rule 59 motion).
The two other cases were Yu v. Jonas, which affirmed permanent periodic alimony for a short marriage (would have been nice if the Court of Appeals informed us how short) and Dendy v. Gamble, which reversed an award of visitation to grandparents, in part because too much time had elapsed since the grandparents had last visited the child.
None of these four opinions are groundbreaking and it is unclear why there were so few published opinions this year. The glacial pace of the appellate is getting even slower (30 years ago, appeals were often decided within a year of filing; now it often takes 3 or more years). The appellate courts aren’t following the requirements of S.C. Code Ann. § 18-9-280, by not publishing a number of opinions that are statutorily required to be published, including one of my appeals this year, Ferguson v. Ferguson, which reversed an award of rehabilitative alimony and remanded for an award of permanent alimony.
Is South Carolina family law so well settled that practitioners and judges don’t need any more published opinions? That’s certainly not my view of the situation.
