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360 Pa. Super. 312

520 A.2d 473

Michael v. Michael

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided January 27, 1987

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1987-01-27

Relies on Melzer v. Witsberger · Conway v. Dana · Costello v. LeNoir

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1987-01-27

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently March 2015

11 state decisions

601987199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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WIEAND, Judge,

¶1dissenting:

¶2I respectfully dissent. “Support, as every other duty encompassed in the role of parenthood, is the equal responsibility of both mother and father. Both must be required to discharge the obligation in accordance with their capacity and ability.” Melzer v. Witsberger, 505 Pa. 462, 468, 480 A.2d 991, 994 (1984), quoting Conway v. Dana, 456 Pa. 536, 540, 318 A.2d 324, 326 (1974) (emphasis added). “[E]very parent has a duty to support his or her minor children ... in accordance with the parents’ respective abilities to pay____” Costello v. LeNoir, 462 Pa. 36, 40, 337 A.2d 866, 868 (1975).

¶3In the instant case, the trial court did not find that appellee, the natural mother of a minor child, was financially unable to contribute to the support of her child, who was in the custody of the father. Therefore, an order of support should have been entered. It was not a complete defense to the mother’s duty to support her child that the father’s income exceeded that of the mother.

¶4I would reverse and remand to the trial court for the entry of an order which is consistent with the decision of the Supreme Court in Melzer v. Witsberger, supra.

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