South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

In a contest to determine whether a deceased mother’s (Mother’s) live-in boyfriend was a psychological parent to her orphaned child (Child), the trial court properly admitted a Facebook post by Mother which described the boyfriend as “such a great father ...

Where the parties had a true joint physical custody arrangement, the appellant-mother’s relocation from Greenville to Columbia presents an issue of first impression as to whether there was a substantial change of circumstances warranting a review of the children’s best ...

Where a troubled mother, who later committed suicide, invited her own father to participate in raising her child, such that he developed a strong parental bond with the child, and where the child’s father participated only minimally in the child’s ...

Where the plaintiff-Father’s monthly income is roughly three times the defendant-Mother’s, a sizable portion of Father’s expenses were for incidentals, and an award of attorney’s fees, while affecting Father’s standard of living, would have a devastating impact on Mother’s standard ...

Although Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), applies retroactively, our state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage constituted an impediment to the formation of a common-law marriage until that impediment was removed. Since the parties separated before the impediment was ...

At the time respondent contracted marriage with the now-deceased James Brown in 2001, she had not resolved her first marriage (to Javed Ahmed); therefore, her marriage to Brown was void ab initio, and there was nothing to be “revived” by ...

While there was no evidence that respondent/petitioner-Husband planned to sell the family business (of which he owned 75 percent and petitioner/respondent-Wife owned 25 percent), when a family court is valuing a minority interest in a closely-held business, the decision as ...

Where petitioner-Husband contended that the typed version of a handwritten settlement agreement contained terms to which he did not agree, he could move for correction of a clerical error pursuant to Rule 60(a), SCRCP. The record does not contain evidence ...

Although appellant-Mother did not seek court intervention for more than seven years while respondent-Father paid less in child support than the court had ordered him to pay, Father did not present sufficient evidence to establish (1) any agreement between the ...

Our Supreme Court has not specifically addressed binding arbitration and the family court’s duty to protect the best interests of children; however, a court cannot be bound by an arbitration award and simultaneously act as parens patriae on behalf of ...