How a Pennsylvania Family Court Determines Custody

No issue is more important when parents separate than the custody and future of their children. Answering this question is also one of the most difficult and unwelcome decisions that a judge must make. The process is complex, the results uncertain, and often expensive. Multiple people, who are strangers to you, your spouse, and your children, can be involved, people such as court-appointed custody masters, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and ultimately judges. All of them are looking out for the “best interests of the child.” None of them really know what that means.

To guide them all, Pennsylvania law requires that they answer a staggering sixteen invasive and uncomfortable questions to help the Court determine the following:

• Which parent is more likely to help foster contact and the relationship between the child and the other parent;
• Which parent is more likely to have a loving and stable relationship with the child; and
• Which party is more likely to take care of the child’s daily physical, emotional, and educational needs.
• Which parent takes care of the child’s basic needs;
• The availability of extended family;
• The accessibility of child-care; and
• The distance between the parents’ homes.

The Courts will even assess your own mental, emotional, and physical health.  If your child is old enough and mature enough, the Courts will take your child’s preferences into account. However, your child’s preferences are not supposed to be the controlling factor.

Custody masters and judges typically use these factors like a score card, ticking off boxes in favor of one parent or another. Then, they add up the score and make their decision. They do not simply give each factor the same weight and declare a winner, however. Moreover, the Courts may not make custody decisions based on gender.  They do, as a practical matter, though, still prefer mothers of young children over fathers. It is hard for father’s to overcome this preferential treatment of mothers. Some factors are more important than others. Some facts lean more heavily in favor of one parent or the other. Even with the factors, fundamentally no judge or custody master looks at the same facts in the same way. That is what makes it so difficult for parents and their attorneys to predict how a judge will decide a custody request.

Even if different judges may assess the factors the same way, at the end of the process they still must decide how to actually divide the custodial time. That decision will determine who gets weekdays, who gets weekends, who gets holidays and vacations, which school will they attend, and even possibly who drops the children off and picks them up. While there are some basic schedules used, different judges will establish different schedules.

For parents, who must leave their children’s home on short notice and do not have a second home for themselves and their children, securing custody of their children can be very hard financially. Courts will limit the out-of-home parent’s time, including overnights with their children, if that parent does not have enough bedrooms and beds for their children. But, setting up a second home on short notice is expensive and time-consuming, especially when, as is so often the case, displaced parents generally do not have much money for their own housing after paying child or spousal support.

The amount of your custody time will also affect the amount of child support payments. To make matters more challenging, keeping up a good relationship with your child is particularly important just after separating for securing a good, long-term future with your child. So, displaced parents should try to make a suitable home for themselves and their children as soon as possible.

All of these considerations make the fight to protect your time and relationship with your children the most difficult and important aspect family separation.

If you need help establishing your right to custodial time with your children or have questions about child custody law in Pennsylvania, please contact Shintia Riva At the Law Offices of Spadea & Associates, LLC for free 20-minute consultation.

HOW FINANCIAL INFIDELITY CAN DESTROY YOUR MARRIAGE AND HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF

Financial infidelity has destroyed many marriages. It can come in many forms. Sometimes, your spouse may be too embarrassed to tell you about a job loss, a failing business, or an unexpected disability. Perhaps, your spouse ran up credit cards without your knowledge for personal luxuries, like clothes and jewelry, or to support an adulterous relationship.

It could be drug or gambling debts. Worse yet, maybe, he or she stole your identity to open credit card accounts under your name. Even more shocking, your spouse may be hiding a mortgage foreclosure or even a pending sheriff’s sale. If you suspect that your spouse has committed financial infidelity, you need to know your rights and your obligations to the creditor and your spouse for personal and joint, marital debt. They depend first depend on whether they are your debts, your spouse’s debts, or your marital debts. They will also depend on whether you are divorcing or being pursued by creditors.

Your Obligation for Individual Debts

When it comes to creditors, only you and not your spouse are legally responsible for your own individual debts, such as your credit cards. You are not responsible for your spouse’s individual debts. You and your spouse are, however, legally obligated to pay your joint debts, such as a mortgage on your home. So, joint creditors can attack your individually owned property, including bank accounts, to pay for joint debts.

Pennsylvania law distinguishes between individual debt and joint marital debt because, your marriage is a separate legal entity that stands apart from you as an individual. In other words, a marriage results in three distinct separate legal units: you, your spouse, and your marriage. Pennsylvania law makes this distinction specifically to protect you and your family from the ravages of your partner’s financial infidelity!

Legally therefore, your joint assets are protected from your spouse’s creditors.  They cannot force a sale of any asset that you own together as spouses. Of course, joint creditors can go after your joint assets, like your home. While these obligations to creditors remain valid when financial infidelity leads to divorce, a divorce can change who is responsible for those debts between you and your spouse.

Your Obligation for Marital Debts

In divorce, your financial obligations fundamentally depend on whether the debts were incurred before your marriage, during marriage, or after separation and divorce.

Pennsylvania’s divorce laws do not hold you responsible for debts that your spouse had before you married or that he or she incurred after you separated and later divorced. Likewise, your spouse is not responsible for your pre-marital debts, your post-separation, or post-divorce debts. In contrast, a divorce may make you responsible for debts that your spouse signed for individually during the marriage and before your separation. Your total debt at the end of a divorce, regardless of whether the debt is yours, your spouse’s, or joint, ultimately depends upon the Court’s decree for equitable distribution or on how you and your spouse divide them in a property settlement agreement.

As noted in our blog, “What is a Marital Asset?,” there are many factors, both well-established and novel, that will determine how responsibility for your marital debts will be divided. Financial infidelity, innocent or not, will be a major factor in shifting the responsibility for debts in your name back to your spouse. There are other reasons for shifting responsibility, though. One example is a student loan that was used for documented household expenses and not for tuition payments. When this occurs, the other spouse may have to pay the debtor spouse or the lender directly even though the debtor spouse will remain primarily responsible to the lender for paying it back.

Protecting Yourself When You Suspect Financial Infidelity

When you suspect financial infidelity, you need to act quickly to protect yourself from your spouse’s debts.  Here are some steps you should take to protect yourself.

• Stop your spouse from using your credit cards by ending your spouse’s authorized use of them. Simply call the credit card company and tell them that your spouse is no longer authorized to use your credit and, most importantly, have them issue you a new card with a new account number. This easy move will prevent your spouse from using your on-line accounts, like Amazon, too.  Do not share this new card with your spouse.
• Open a separate bank account if you do not have one already. Then, have your employer deposit your wages or salary directly into that account. Now you, not your spouse, will control what you do with your money.
• Review statements for your bank, mortgage, loans, and credit card accounts. Challenge suspicious transactions by reporting them to the fraud departments.
• Get your credit report. Review it for loans accounts that you do not recognize. Make sure the balances are correct. While it is illegal for you or your attorney to try to get a copy of your spouse’s credit report without consent, you can ask your spouse for permission. Your spouse’s credit report will show how much and to whom your spouse is indebted. You can ask your spouse for the report as a routine precaution against fraudulent creditors.
• Search online for lawsuits and judgments against you and your spouse.
• Change passwords for financial accounts and your computer and cell phone lock screens to keep your spouse from accessing them.

The impacts of financial infidelity on your credit and your future economic security can be devastating and long-lasting. An experienced attorney can help you to overcome them.  If you suspect that your spouse has committed financial infidelity or have any questions about your responsibility for marital debt and repairing the damage done, please contact Shintia Riva, Esquire at the Law offices of Spadea & Associates, LLC for free consultation at 610-521-0604.

UNDERSTANDING CHILD CUSTODY IN PENNSYLVANIA

No issue is more important when parents separate than the custody and future of their children. Answering this question is also one of the most difficult and unwelcome decisions that a judge must make. The process is complex, the results uncertain, and often expensive. Multiple people, who are strangers to you, your spouse, and your children, can be involved, people such as court-appointed custody masters, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and ultimately judges. All of them are looking out for the “best interests of the child.” None of them really know what that means.

To guide them all, Pennsylvania law requires that they answer a staggering number of invasive and uncomfortable questions – 16 in all! The Courts must answer difficult questions like:

• Which parent is more likely to help foster contact the relationship between the child and the other parent;
• Which parent is more likely to have a loving and stable relationship with the child; and
• Which party is more likely to take care of the child’s daily physical, emotional, and educational needs.

They must also answer simpler questions like:

• Which parent takes care of the child’s basic needs;
• The availability of extended family;
• The accessibility of child-care; and
• The distance between the parents’ homes.

The Courts will even assess your own mental, emotional, and physical health.  If your child is old enough and mature enough, the Courts will take your child’s preferences into account. However, your child’s preferences are not supposed to be the controlling factor.

Custody masters and judges typically use these factors like a score card, ticking off boxes in favor of one parent or another. Then, they add up the score and make their decision. They do not simply give each factor the same weight and declare a winner, however. Moreover, the Courts may not make custody decisions based on gender.  They do, as a practical matter, though still prefer mothers of young children over fathers, which is hard for fathers to overcome. Some factors are more important than others. Some facts lean more heavily in favor of one parent or the other. Even with the factors, fundamentally no judge or custody master looks at the same facts in the same way. That is what makes it so difficult for a parent and their attorney to predict how a judge will decide a custody request.

Even if different judges may assess the factors the same way, at the end of the process they still must decide how to actually divide the custodial time. That decision will determine who gets weekdays, who gets weekends, who gets holidays and vacations, which school will they attend, and even possibly who drops the children off and picks them up. While there are some basic schedules used, different judges will establish different schedules.

For parents, who must leave their children’s home on short notice and do not have a second home for themselves and their children, securing custody of their children can be very hard financially. Courts will limit the out-of-home parent’s time, including overnights with their children, if that parent does not have enough bedrooms and beds for their children. But, setting up a second home on short notice is expensive and time-consuming, especially when, as is so often the case, displaced parents generally do not have much money for their own housing after paying child or spousal support. The amount of your custody time will also affect the amount of child support payments. To make matters more challenging, keeping up a good relationship with your child is particularly important just after separating for securing a good, long-term future with your child. So, displaced parents should try to make a suitable home for themselves and their children as soon as possible.

All of these considerations make the fight to protect your time and relationship with your children the most difficult and important aspect family separation.

If you need help establishing your right to custodial time with your children or have questions about child custody law in Pennsylvania, please contact Gregory J. Spadea at the Law Offices of Spadea & Associates, LLC at 610-521-0604 for free 20-minute consultation.

Knowing what is and what is not “marital property” is vital to a satisfactory outcome when filing for divorce in Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania’s statutes define “marital property.”  While the statute excludes specifically certain types of property, most divorces concern two kinds of marital property:

•  property that you acquired during your marriage as an individual or jointly with your spouse; and
•  the increase in the value of property that you had when you got married and continued to own during your marriage.

An example of the first kind of property is a car that you bought in your own name after you got married.  Even if you titled the car only in your name or you used your own money from your individual bank account to pay for it, the car is marital property.  An example of the second kind of property is a car that you owned when you got married.  In that case, only the increase in the value of the car during your marriage above the value of car before you got married is considered marital property.

Marital property means more than just a physical object, like your house or your car.  It can also mean things like your right to money damages because of a car or work accident or a broken contract.  If the accident occurred when you were married but before the date of your final separation, the right to that money is marital property.  It does not matter whether you were paid a settlement on that claim after your divorce.  The settlement money is still marital property.

Not every piece of property that you acquired after you were married is considered marital.  Any kind of property that you acquire after your “final separation” using your own funds is not marital.  So, if you bought that car after you separated from your spouse with money that you earned after you separated, then the car is yours.  Your spouse has no claim to it.  On the other hand, if you bought that car after you separated and you used joint funds, then the car is marital property.

Marital property is more than just what you own.  It also is what you owe to creditors, like banks and credit card companies.  Debts like those are considered marital debts, even if your spouse ran up charges on his or her personal credit card during your marriage and before final separation without your knowledge or consent.  While, you may not be liable to the bank for those kind of debts, those debts are considered marital obligations.  Responsibility for those debts will be divided between you and your spouse.  The key in all of these situations clearly is figuring out the date of final separation.

Since Pennsylvania does not recognize the idea of “legal separation,” the date of your final separation may be as late as the date when you or your spouse filed for divorce.  It may also be as early as the date when you stopped living under the same roof.  However, when you and your spouse continue to live under the same roof, the courts will have to decide the date of your final separation.  In those situations, there are several facts that Pennsylvania courts will consider when figuring out the date of your final separation.  Whether and when you and your spouse stopped presenting yourselves as a married couple is significant.  The date when you separated your finances, if you held joint bank accounts during your marriage, is also relevant.  The date when you stopped sharing a bedroom or having sexual relations matters too.  Even something as simple as whether you and your spouse grocery shop, cook, or eat together can be important.

Practically speaking, the date of your final separation will determine when you and your spouse stopped acquiring marital property and stopped getting into marital debt.  For spouses, who own or control most of the marital assets or who incurred the least amount of individual debt, advocating for the earliest date of final separation is important.  Conversely, for spouses, who do not own or control most of the marital assets or who incurred most of the marital debt, advocating for a later date of final separation is critical. 

If you are not sure about your marital property or obligations or you have any questions about marital property, please contact Gregory J. Spadea, Esquire, at 610- 521-0604 at the Law Offices of Spadea & Associates LLC for a free 20-minute consultation.