The June 6, 2018 Court of Appeals opinion in York v. York addresses the issue of who is a dependent for the purpose of benefits under South Carolina’s Workers Compensation Act. In doing so, it analyzing an issue that may impact child custody cases. In York, Yvonne Burns sought dependancy benefits from the Workers Compensation […]
Posts Tagged ‘Child Custody’
Court of Appeals finds standing for paternal grandparents to obtain custody when mother is unfit
Given a culture that expects parents to be responsible for raising their children, the law has developed that fit parents should (with the limited exceptions of defacto custodians or psychological parents) defeat the custody challenges of non-parents. Just last month, in Urban v. Kerscher, the Court of Appeals returned custody to a fit mother who […]
Court of Appeals applies Moore factors and returns child to mother
The May 23, 2018 Court of Appeals opinion in Urban v. Kerscher reverses a Family Court’s continuation of custody to third parties and returns the child to Mother. In 2014 Mother placed her daughter with Leo Kerscher and Mary Crew to pursue and secure a permanent home and employment in Pennsylvania. She originally intended this […]
Court of Appeals approves joint custody order (and the post-trial reformation of an equitable distribution agreement)
The May 2, 2018 Court of Appeals opinion of Clark v. Clark is one of the rare published opinions approving true joint physical custody. Further the opinion approves a post-trial reformation of an equitable distribution agreement based upon what the court described as a “clerical error.” The Clark divorce litigation essentially commenced when the parties […]
Passports and child custody
I know family court judges who don’t have passports and am frankly shocked–until you experience foreign cultures its hard to truly understand that radically different approaches to parenting other than the current American middle-class norm might be effective (and might not be potentially abusive). The world is diverse and increasingly interconnected. Children who don’t get […]
Possibly correct but poorly reasoned custody and relocation decision from the Court of Appeals
The January 24, 2018 Court of Appeals opinion in Burgess v. Arnold is possibly correct but, in at least three important particulars, poorly reasoned. Burgess stems from Mother’s appeal of a family court order that gave the parties joint custody with her having primary custody over all issue except education. That order required that she […]
How fathers who gain custody can keep custody
For reasons having nothing to do with sexism, more mothers than fathers have custody of their children. Often when fathers get custody they have never had the role of equal or primary caretaker of their children. If they gained custody because the mother was unfit (and remains unfit) there is little risk of mother getting […]