About five years ago–after being burned for the umpteenth time by entering a temporary consent order binding my client to a temporary support without first obtaining a financial declaration from the opposing party, only to subsequently learn that the other party’s income and expenses would not have justified such generous support–I vowed never again to […]
Archive for the ‘South Carolina Specific’ Category
2018 Published Family Court opinions summary
My annual table of the previous year’s published South Carolina family court opinions are below. There were sixteen published opinions in 2018, two of which were slight revisions of opinions first published in 2017. This is much fewer than the number when I started this blog a decade ago but much more than have been […]
Court of Appeals slightly revises opinion in Brown v. Odom
On January 9, 2019 the South Carolina Court of Appeals released a slightly revised opinion in Brown v. Odom. Normally I would discuss the changes to a substituted published opinion. However, here the substituted opinion contains no new legal analysis and simply makes small but frequent revisions to the factual findings that underpin the holding. […]
Court of appeals reverses grant of grandparent visitation based upon narrow interpretation of “denying visitation”
The January 4, 2019 Court of Appeals opinion in Brown v. Key represents the first published opinion addressing the 2014 revision to South Carolina’s grandparent visitation statute, S.C. Code § 63-3-530(A)(33). Four months after affirming an award of grandparent visitation under the prior, more restrictive statute, Brown reversed the family court’s award of grandparent visitation. […]
Don’t let your kids become pinball wizards
I have no desire to mine the legislative history to determine when and why some South Carolina legislator decided he needed to save our state’s youth from the evils of pinball. Whatever fears led to the enactment of S.C. Code § 63-19-2430–a model of simplicity which states, “It is unlawful for a minor under the […]
Court of Appeals addresses valuation of a closely held business
The November 28, 2018 Court of Appeals opinion in Clark v. Clark is one more data point in the confusion that is South Carolina transmutation litigation. Clark further addresses how one values the minority shares of a closely held business. The primary issue on appeal involved identifying the marital portion and valuing PCI, a business […]
There is no formula to predict South Carolina alimony obligations
There’s a chart circulating amongst South Carolina family law attorneys that lists most of the published alimony opinions and has columns for the amount of alimony ordered, length of marriage, the spouses’ respective incomes and expenses, grounds for divorce, and other factors described in the alimony statute. My understanding is that family law attorneys look […]
Shouldn’t a party’s assets be a factor in “ability to pay” family court attorney’s fees?
E.D.M. v. T.A.M., 307 S.C. 471, 476-77, 415 S.E.2d 812, 816 (1992) is the seminal South Carolina case in deciding whether to award a prevailing party attorney’s fees in family court. It lists four factors the family court should use to determine an award of fees. Excepting the “beneficial results” factor, the other three factors […]