If a person has a child approaching kindergarten in the Fall of 2020, or a child in 8th grade and ready to begin High School, choice of school issues should now be front and center.

We, at the Schwartz Law Firm, believe, and advise our clients, that the Fall season, of the year before the beginning of the following school year, is the appropriate time to determine if parents are in agreement regarding school choice. If not, a Petition for Custody (if parties have no custody order) or a Petition to Modify an existing order, should be filed right away.

So, you’ve made it through the Holidays and New Years’, staggered to work on Monday morning, and here we are; facing a new decade. 2019, 2010….same thing…different day. Really? Is that all you’ve got?

Scenario: A Parent has no Custody Order. The Other Parent has no contact with the child and no interest in having Custody time with the child. The Parent-in-Custody has no real “need” to get have a Custody Order. On the other hand, the Parent-in-Custody simply “wants” to get a Custody Order, as a perceived item of “safety” or to be able to tell the world that “I have sole custody of my child”. Are these “good enough” reasons? What may happen if the Parent-in-Custody does file for Custody?

In January 2011, the new Custody Act became effective in Pennsylvania. In the new Custody Act, there are 16 “factors”, which the Court must consider and analyze, in deciding a Custody matter. Since the enactment of the new Custody Act, prior judicial decisions and holdings have been laid to waste by the enactment of

Much of legal custody writing discusses issues and concerns surrounding Physical Custody. This flavor of custody, Physical, concerns the number of overnights a child spends with each parent. If a child spends more overnights in a month with one parent, that parent has Primary Physical Custody and the other parent has Partial Physical Custody.