Court Opinion

ID: 9697113
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:06:19.310883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:29.281477
License: Public Domain

BROSKY, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result.
With regard to the relationship between concurrent partition and divorce proceedings, my views have been expressed *489in my dissenting opinion in Goldstein v. Goldstein, 354 Pa.Super. 490, 512 A.2d 644 (1986). To that dissent, I would add only the following observation.
The majority argues for retention of both actions seeking to allocate property. The partition action will somehow be stayed so that the court has “options.” Vento style partitions will be stayed and the cases will be consolidated. The court can then either enter a partition order or “issue a divorce decree and allocate property in accordance with the equities of the case.” This ignores, of course the onerous three-year separation provision in the Code that can postpone equitable distribution for the full 36 months and beyond. This gives enormous power to the spouse who seeks partition to increase or limit the award, while the other spouse may be compelled to file for or submit to a divorce to stop the partition.
It is clear that nothing can be done to stop a litigant from forcing his or her spouse to file a divorce action in response to a partition (unless the legislature acts to abolish partition), however, the law can fashion a remedy so as to not provide the spouse filing the partition action with the power to defeat equitable distribution when it is to his or her advantage. The majority assumes that since he does not have the facts of the partition allegations before him, it would have been denied. What if that assumption is false?
The majority states the issue before us as follows: “... is partition of entireties property superceded [sic] by a request for equitable distribution under the new Divorce Code?” The majority’s answer to this question then follows: “The most definitive answer we can give, as will appear below, is ‘not quite.’”1
The indefinite nature of this answer will, I am afraid, not provide the guidance that is expected by the family bench and bar.

. "Not quite” is also inconsistent with Goldstein’s emphatic “no.”