Montgomery County Family Law Blog

Starting at the beginning of 2019, couples filing for divorce in Pennsylvania and throughout the rest of the United States will have to do so with tax rule changes in mind, particularly if spousal support will be involved. This is happening because the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changes how alimony is handled for tax purposes. Under the new law, alimony will not be tax-deductible for the payor, and the recipient won't be required to report it as taxable income.

If divorce proceedings were started at the end of 2018, it's likely already too late to beat the clock unless a final agreement or court order referencing alimony was already prepared or issued. Since mortgage interest deductions are currently capped at $750,000 instead of the previous $1 million, and local and state income taxes are now capped at $10,000, a divorcing spouse may also want to consider what tax advantages might be associated with ownership of the marital home.

For people in Pennsylvania, the explosion in popularity of DNA testing has led to increasingly common scientific validation of paternity and other familial relationships. The precision and growing affordability of DNA tests has made paternity tests more common, and they are frequently used in the courtroom when addressing child support and custody issues. This is especially true when the parents are unmarried, or there is a dispute about parentage In some cases, DNA tests are even required to make a firm legal order of paternity.

In some cases, DNA paternity tests have freed people of child support obligations after proving that they were not the child's actual parent. In many other cases, a child support order has been established after the legal confirmation of a child's parentage. In many cases, a man married to the mother of a child is presumed to be the father. This presumption may be rebuttable with a DNA test to the contrary, but the opposite situation exists for unmarried fathers. When the father and mother are not married, the father's name does not need to be listed on the birth certificate unless he is legally considered the father.

Most of us know that money or employment can influence whether couples get divorced. We've also all heard the popular theory that children of divorce oftentimes get divorced.

These factors, however, may be a bit more surprising. Here are three things studies claim to have linked to a higher likelihood of divorce.

We all have different divorce stories. Some of these stories involve betrayal, others find liberation - but most divorce stories are just plain unpleasant.

When it comes time to tell your divorce story - and the time will come over and over in the beginning - it's important to consider your audience. Here are a few tips for telling your story.