Child Support - Contempt - Imputed Income
Ricci v. West, A25A0618 (Georgia Court of Appeals, May 1, 2025):
Ex‑wife filed a petition for contempt, alleging that ex‑husband had failed to provide documentation of his income and underpaid child support in violation of the divorce decree. After a bench trial, the trial court granted ex‑wife's petition for contempt and required ex‑husband to pay past due child support. Held: The trial court impermissibly modified divorce decree, which incorporated parties' settlement agreement, by imputing income to ex‑husband for child support purposes. The parties' separation agreement provided that any fluctuation in ex‑husband's salary of more than $10,000 annually was substantial change in circumstances that automatically adjusted his child support obligation; the language of this self‑executing escalator/de‑escalator provision did not distinguish between involuntary and voluntary salary changes as to prohibit the latter, nor did it provide a mandatory minimum amount floor for child support payments. In light of unambiguous language of the decree and the incorporated separation agreement, there was no evidence to support the trial court's ruling that the ex‑husband's voluntary decrease in salary violated terms of the decree.
Child Custody - ICARA – Attorney’s Fees
Hulsh v. Hulsh, No. 130931, 2025 IL 130931 (Illinois Supreme Court, May 22, 2025):
Mother brought action against children's paternal grandmother and uncle, asserting claims of tortious interference with custodial rights and aiding and abetting tortious interference with custodial rights, and seeking to recover expenses she incurred to regain custody after father abducted and secreted children to United States from Slovakia, including attorney fees and costs that federal court had awarded to her in her action under Hague Convention and International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA) but that she could not collect from father because he had filed for bankruptcy protection. Held: The question of whether to recognize a civil cause of action for tortious interference with the parent‑child relationship was matter for the legislature - not the judiciary - to decide. Thus, mother could not recover from father's relatives expenses she incurred in federal court action to regain custody of her children from father pursuant to ICARA under a tortious interference theory, even though the legislature had enacted criminal statutes addressing interference with custody.
Child Support - Income - Evidence
Nou v. Huot, No. Cum‑24‑122, 2025 ME 44 (Maine Supreme Judicial Court, May 22, 2025):
In setting child support, the trial court found that the treated income from the parties' convenience store as her own. Held: The trial court's finding that the store was open 300 days a year was not supported by the evidence since none of the witnesses gave testimony on how many days per week or days per year store was open, husband's testimony about store's income was stale and speculative because he had no involvement in business for past five years and had no specific knowledge of nature or amount of store's receipts after that, and there was no testimony or other evidence that wife failed to declare any of store's cash receipts for tax purposes or that store's gross sales and profits were not accurately reported on tax returns.
Divorce - Judgment - Contempt - Improper Modification
Saint‑Albin v. Eubanks, No. A25A0218 (Georgia Court of Appeals, May 20, 2025):
The ex‑wife moved for contempt against the ex‑husband, alleging that he failed to make payments required by parties' settlement agreement that was incorporated into divorce decree. The trial court found the ex‑husband in contempt, awarded the ex‑wife interest on payments and attorney fees, and ordered ex‑husband to sell two real properties awarded to him under agreement and decree. Held: the requirement in the contempt order that the ex‑husband sell properties constituted impermissible modification of parties' divorce decree, thus requiring reversal. The parties’ agreement awarded the two properties to the ex‑husband unencumbered, the decree did not require the ex‑husband to sell the properties if he failed to comply with other obligations listed in the settlement, and trial court was not merely clarifying consent orders that post‑dated parties' divorce decree.
Divorce - Grounds – Living Separate and Apart
Lisann v. Lisann, 915 S.E.2d 59 (Virginia Supreme Court, May 8, 2025):
Wife filed for no‑fault divorce on the ground of having lived separate and apart for at least one year, and husband counterclaimed for divorce based on adultery and desertion. Held: (1) as a matter of first impression, under the statute providing for a no‑fault divorce on the basis of the parties having lived separate and apart for the statutory period, the required intent to permanently live separately and apart is required to exist not only on the separation date but also throughout the statutory period, and (2) the evidence was sufficient to support finding that wife intended to permanently live separate and apart from the husband during the statutory period.
Parental Rights - First Amendment - Vaccinations
Care and Protection of Eve, 496 Mass. 42, 258 N.E.3d 329 (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, May 15, 2025):
The Department of Children and Families sought to vaccinate a child in its temporary custody in accordance with an age‑based immunization schedule. The parents, practicing Rastafarians, objected on religious grounds and sought to bar the department from having the child vaccinated. Held: (1) as a matter of first impression, the parents retain residual constitutional rights regarding the religious upbringing of the child, notwithstanding the temporary loss of custody of that child to the child protection agency; (2) the parents sufficiently established that they were asserting sincerely held religious beliefs; (3) the parents made the requisite showing that the department's efforts to vaccinate their child substantially burdened their exercise of their religion; and (4) the department's interest in protecting the welfare of children in its temporary custody was not sufficiently compelling to justify burdening parents' religious exercise by vaccinating their child.
(Ed. Note: If the children in the department’s custody start dying of measles, will the court change its mind?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/05/30/measles-updates-texas-reports-one-new-case-as-spread-slows/)
Property Division - Classification - Appreciation Marital Property
Bolduc v. Getchius, No. Cum‑23‑436, 2025 ME 41 (Maine Supreme Judicial Court, May 6, 2025):
The husband failed to rebut the presumption that $269,000 appreciation of his non-marital real property during marriage was marital property, even though the husband offered unrebutted testimony from an appraiser establishing that only $40,000 of the appreciation resulted from specific improvements made to the property during marriage, such as finishing the basement, erecting a shed, and building a new fence, and that the rest was due to “changes in the marketplace”. In addition to the improvements identified by expert, there was evidence that during, the marriage parties insulated the attic, paved the driveway, installed an irrigation system, and tended to landscaping.
Property Division - Dissipation - Erratic Behavior - Guardian ad Litem
M.B. V. C.B., 85 Misc. 3d 1284 (A), 2025 NY Slip Op 50789(U) (New York Supreme Court, Westchester County, May 15, 2025) (unreported):
Both husband and wife are attorneys. During a pre-motion conference, the wife’s counsel “indicated that his client was concerned about [the husband’s] continued erratic behavior including his use of the social media platform TikTok, including representations made during recordings of [the husband] on TikTok that he had gifted significant sums of funds believed to be in excess of twenty or thirty thousand dollars....While characterizing his TikTok expenditures as investment rather than gifts, [the husband] confirmed that he has spent at least $300,000.00 on TikTok since February of this year, approximately $275,000.00 of which was spent following the commencement of this litigation, while advising that it is nearly impossible to track when TikTok gifts are made.” The court determined that the husband was behaving so erratically that he needed a guardian ad litem. (The dissipation was a given.)
Property Division - Factors – Length of Marriage
Nagle v. Nagle, 2025 ND 94 (North Dakota Supreme Court, May 8, 2025):
The husband appealed from a divorce judgment, arguing that the district court erred by treating the parties’ second marriage as a long‑term marriage and by finding a near equal distribution of the parties’ marital estate was fair and equitable. The husband also claimed the court erred in its property division because the court awarded the wife property that she previously waived her rights to in their first divorce. Held: The court's equitable distribution of the marital estate under the Ruff‑Fischer guidelines is clearly erroneous. “Considering the facts from both marriages, the court conducted a detailed analysis of the Ruff‑Fischer guidelines. The court's Ruff‑Fischer analysis strongly leaned toward Gene Nagle receiving more of the marital estate, not an equal division. Yet, despite its analysis and findings, the court equally divided the marital property. The court appears to have done so because it combined the two marriages and treated them as a single long‑term marriage. If that is the basis of the court's equal property division, the court's division of marital property is clearly erroneous because it is induced by an erroneous view of the law.”
Property Division – Veterans’ Disability Benefits - Federal Preemption
In re Marriage of Tronsrue, Nos. 130596, 13059, 2025 IL 130596 (Illinois Supreme Court, May 22, 2025):
Ex‑husband petitioned to terminate payments that marital‑settlement agreement, as incorporated into judgment for dissolution of marriage, obligated him to make to ex‑wife out of his veterans' disability benefits. Held: The anti‑assignment provisions of the federal Veterans Benefits Act did not preempt enforcement of marital‑settlement agreement, as incorporated into judgment for dissolution of marriage, that required the distribution of some of ex‑husband's veterans' disability benefits to ex‑wife. Key to the decision was that instead of circuit court ordering ex‑husband to make such payments, ex‑husband agreed to use his disability benefits how he saw fit after receiving them. Moreover, res judicata precluded relitigation of ex‑husband's obligation to make payments to ex‑wife out of his veterans' disability benefits. The ex‑husband and ex‑wife were same parties in the original proceedings, dissolution judgment was valid final judgment, and the action to end the obligation enforced the original dissolution judgment without modifying that judgment or introducing new matters that could not have been addressed in the original proceeding.
Law Review Articles of Interest
Ariel J. Adler, New Get Laws, Prenups, and Social Media Shaming: a Grassroots Social Media Movement's Proposals to Assist Women in Jewish Divorce, 23 Rutgers J. L. & Religion 1 (2024-25)
James G. Dwyer, Mired in Meyer’s Mischief a Century after Fabrication of Constitutional Parents' Rights, 26 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 107 (2025)
Hon. Elizabeth Gunn, Stuart Wilson‑Patton, William R. Pursell, Where, Oh Where, Are the Child‑Support Creditors?, 44‑MAY Am. Bankr. Inst. J. 14 (May 2025)
Courtney Hutchinson, Her Bun + My Oven = Our Child: Protecting the Legal Parentage of LGBTQ+ Mothers and Their Children Conceived via Reciprocal in Vitro Fertilization in Ohio, 73 Clev. St. L. Rev. 833 (2025)
Laurie S. Kohn, Justice Delayed by Design: The Harms of Our Protracted Divorce System, 70 Vill. L. Rev. 169 (2025)
Jeffrey A. Parness, Evaporating Natural Parent Childcare Liberties under New Parentage Laws, 77 Ark. L. Rev. 643 (2025)
Ram Rivlin, Shahar Lifshitz, Reimagining Marital Property at Death, 32 Elder L.J. 353 (2025)
Sam Silverberg, May She Get Justice: How Coercive Control Statutes Mitigate Religious Abuse in Contested Jewish Divorces, 102 Wash. U. L. Rev. 951 (2025)
Jayden Solomon, A Stronger Future for Family Law Arbitration: Enhancing the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act to Shield the Vulnerable, 33 J.L. & Pol'y 254 (2025)
Alice Aronov Tepler, Procreation after Passing: Balancing Interests in Levirate Marriage and Posthumous Reproduction, 63 J. Cath. Legal Stud. 67 (2025)
Eliot T. Tracz, Property Problems in the New Non‑Marriage: Inheritance, 33 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 1 (2025)
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