Court Opinion

ID: 9646732
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:09:31.822366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:41.335358
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the majority that the order of the lower court should be affirmed. Appellee originally filed a petition for support on March 5, 1971, which made no reference to the prior private agreement between the parties; she merely recited that she was receiving $25 a week in support of their son, and requested an increase in that amount. It was appellant in his answer to the petition for support who pleaded the private agreement, attached it as an exhibit, and asked the court to rescind it in part and require him to pay only $10 a week. The response of the lower court was to enter an order on April 6, 1971, requiring appellant to continue to comply with the existing agreement. The April 1974 consent order resulted from a petition for support that was filed by appellee and alleged breach of the April 6,1971, order.1 Thus it is clear that the order now being appealed from is not an order enforcing a private agreement but rather an order enforcing at least two prior court orders.
Having said this much, I believe we should stop. I find the language in the majority opinion, slip op. at 3, too broad. Until and unless the terms of a private agreement have been embodied in a court order, however entered, whether by consent or not, the holding of Commonwealth ex rel. Jones v. Jones, 216 Pa.Super. 1, 260 A.2d 809 (1969), is clear: a *100private support agreement that has not been entered as a court order may not be enforced as a support order but may only be the subject of a law suit, like any other private agreement. This principle, of course, does not prevent one to whom a duty of support is owing from filing a petition for support in an amount in keeping with the agreement, and then seeking enforcement of whatever order the court enters.

. Neither appellant’s statement of the case, Brief for Appellant at 3, nor his highly selective listing of docket entries, Reproduced Record at la, makes any mention of the 1971 court order.