Court Opinion

ID: 9696314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:44:39.642614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:21.189554
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Woodside, J.:
I fear that it might be gleaned from the opinion of the majority that it is the court’s business to look into the family pocketbook and bill file whenever requested by the wife to do so, and that we have set aside the support order here because, after examining the family budget, we concluded that the husband was handling the money satisfactorily. The law does not contemplate that the courts should attempt to solve the financial difficulties of a husband and wife who are living together.
Although the majority has advanced sufficient reasons for reversing the order of support after it examined the family financial problems, I believe the order should be set aside solely on the more basic ground that the court should not attempt to allocate the husband’s pay check to the family bills when the husband and wife are living together. This, it seems to me, is the rule established by Commonwealth v. George, 358 Pa. 118, 123, 56 A. 2d 228 (1948). This rule might be subject to a few exceptions, as, for example, where a husband and father has been regularly drinking his pay before paying the grocer, but certainly the case before us here has nothing to take it out of the general rule. For these reasons, I concur in our reversing the support order.
Rhodes, P. J., and Wright, J., join in this opinion.