In the divorce business, there are few alleys as dark as of the college financial aid. We are commonly asked how separation and divorce may affect eligibility for student aid and loans. The October 21, 2019 Wall Street Journal sheds some light on this murky subject and is worth a full read. But, the main
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DIVORCE AND COLLEGE: Can They Be Reconciled?
By Mark Ashton on
Whenever I start these kinds of articles, I stop to ask, “Is this subject really relevant to the process of divorce?” Separation and divorce are realities of modern day life. Education of the children who come into this world through marriage is not just a major expense. For any caring parent, it is also a…
Countdown for Tax Reform: How It May Affect You
By Mark Ashton on
Just before Christmas last year, Congress passed and the President signed a major tax reform package that contained a surprising wrinkle. It abandoned a decades long provision that permitted payors of alimony or spousal support to deduct their payments from income and required recipients to report the payments and pay tax on them.
The effective…
Hanrahan v. Bakker: A Hit or a Miss?
By Mark Ashton on
On June 19, 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in an Opinion that could be described as unanimous, ruled that the trial court was correct when it decided that it could deviate from presumptive minimum guidelines in a high-end child support case. The case has been floating about for quite some time. We wrote about the…
Alimony Ambiguity Reach Stage “Critical”
By Mark Ashton on
We have still not seen a copy of the Senate bill although PBS Newshour reports that the final version adopted by the Senate was not circulated in the Senate until late Friday evening and about 5 hours before the vote. However, it appears that the Senate bill does not change existing alimony rules. As noted…
Big Divorce Change: First Draft of House Tax Reform Bill
By Mark Ashton on
Any American with a pulse knows that 2017 was to be the first overhaul of U.S. Tax Law since 1986. Until this week, what was circulating through Washington was an 18 page executive summary. That changed yesterday when the House Republican Tax Policy Committee circulated a draft bill that specified exactly what changes were being…
Can Divorcing Families Afford The “Sporting Life?”
By Mark Ashton on
The September 7 issue of TIME Magazine features our obsession with childhood sports. The statistics tell the story. In 2005, school age children played sports at a combined cost of about $8 billion per annum. Today that number is about $15 billion, almost double. And, during this same period there was no increase in the…
Look Under The Tree And There’s A Family Law Case Involving Evidence
By Mark Ashton on
Not terribly exciting but evidence rulings are hard to find and ones where a family law ruling is reversed based on evidence used by the trial judge are especially rare.
Johnson v. Johnson 2016 Pa. Super. 294 is a published panel decision where the issue was whether Father needed to continue to support an adult…
Can There Be Too Much Child Support?
By Mark Ashton on
We live in a day when reported (i.e. precedential) decisions are rare and decisions touching upon important philosophical differences are like hen’s teeth. But on November 18 the planets aligned to give us Hanrahan v. Bakker, a 2-1 panel decision with Judges Ford Elliott and Dubow in the majority and Jenkins in dissent. The…
Would You Like Your Lawyer, A La Carte?
By Mark Ashton on
I was researching material for this blog when courtesy of some “cookie” embedded in a website, I was treated to an opportunity to save substantially on my divorce legal fees by signing on for a service that offered me “al a carte” divorce services by law firms standing by to help me without the “unnecessary”…