Divorce and dissolution of marriage

The plaintiff husband filed for divorce arguing that his wife was impossible to live with due to her neurosis for cleanliness. The defendant wife refused to agree to divorce because she had a seven-year-old child who needed child support. The plaintiff dated another woman and was living separately from the defendant for two years and four months before filing for divorce.

Under Pennsylvania law, a divorce can be either “fault-based” or “no-fault.” Grounds for a “fault-based” divorce include the following: abandonment (unmoving spouse has left the home) without a reasonable cause for a period of one or more years; adultery; cruel and barbarous treatment (unmoving spouse has treated movant in a way that puts his/her life or health at risk); bigamy (movant’s spouse married movant without first divorcing his/her spouse); imprisonment for two or more years; or movant’s spouse has acted in a way that made movant’s life unbearable or extremely difficult.

Pennsylvania is an equitable distribution state, which means the court will “equitably and fairly” divide, distribute, or assign the marital property between the parties, regardless of marital misconduct. “Marital property” generally means all property acquired by either spouse during the marriage. All property acquired by a spouse during their marriage is presumed to be marital property regardless of how title is held.

The determination of the nature, amount, and duration of alimony in the state of Pennsylvania is based on the court’s weighing of several factors. Among the factors considered by the court in its alimony determination are the following: (1) the relative earnings of the parties; (2) the ages and the physical, mental, and emotional conditions of the parties; (3) the sources of income of both parties, including, but not limited to, medical, retirement, insurance, or other benefits; (4) the expectancies and inheritances of the parties; (5) the duration of the marriage; (6) the contrib

Pennsylvania uses a system referred to as the “Income Shares Model” for determining child support. This methodology focuses primarily on the net incomes of the parents and aims to grant the children the same proportion of the parental income that he or she would have received had the parents not divorced. These guidelines were updated in 2026 to reflect increased net income caps and an increase in financial responsibility for each child.

In making custody and visitation decisions, Pennsylvania courts look to various factors in determining what is in the “best interest of the child.” The factors weighed by the court include: (1) the well-reasoned preference of the child, based on the child’s maturity and judgment; (2) the need for stability and continuity in the child’s education, family life and community life; (3) which parent is more likely to foster a relationship between the noncustodial parent and the child; (4) each parent’s history of violent or abusive conduct; and (5) specific criminal convictions.

The legal question is whether the Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice should intervene in the ruling of the Great Rabbinical Court or not. The husband (“respondent 3”) owned an apartment and had no intention of sharing the ownership with the petitioner in a divorce case, which was first submitted to the Regional Rabbinical Court.

This legal advisory opinion found that a divorced woman is not entitled to the typical social allowance provided to married individuals by their employers.  The woman, unnamed in the opinion, applied for the allowance because she has custody of her minor son.  The opinion states that the allowance can be only provided to married women with children whose husband is unemployed, jobless, or incapacitated.  A divorced woman cannot benefit from this support even if she is the sole custodian of her child.  Nonetheless, this Advisory Opinion requests that the Qatar Legisl

This memorandum examines the definition of cohabitation and its effect upon agreements between cohabitants in Louisiana, U.S.A.

The this case, the court held that a divorce initiated and obtained by a husband under Islamic religious and secular Pakistani law would not be recognized and afforded comity in Maryland. The petitioner argued that because he performed “talaq,” (which under Islamic law, allows a husband to divorce his wife by stating “I divorce thee” three times) the Circuit Court for Montgomery County lacked jurisdiction “to litigate the division of the parties’ marital property.” The opinion states the "trial court found that the marr