WHY IS MY LAWYER FIGHTING ON A VIDEO SUPPORT CONFERENCE? 

Lots of things changed when the Covid crisis of 2020 shut down the Courts. Courts shifted to remote hearings in many instances and, often with good effect. Nowhere have remote proceedings been more widely adopted than in the world of support intake. Until 2020, the parties and counsel were required to appear in the local county seat bringing paystubs and tax returns with them so that they could be exchanged and evaluated in the presence of a hearing officer who would issue a temporary order. In some Pennsylvania counties, the courts would independently subpoena wage data from the employers to assure that current income data was available at the conference. Typically, the conference ended with all parties in possession of those records. 

Today, many counties have abandoned live conferences. Each party is instructed to upload payroll and other income data electronically in the days preceding the conference. The problem emerging is that the data is not being circulated for review. In some cases, conference officers deciding the case on an interim basis are not sharing the information they receive. Instead, they are reporting their conclusions based upon their analysis of the data. 

This makes for a world of trouble. First, the business of reading payroll records is not easy. America has millions of employers and they hire thousands of different companies to manage their payrolls. At a risk of oversimplification, they are all different and, in many instances, the employees themselves can’t decipher them. Then there is the matter of litigants who are self employed. When and how they report their earnings is largely in their exclusive control. And in support proceedings they have no reason to provide complete information for the court to process. 

Many clients choose to not employ attorneys for these intake proceedings. And some assume that a neutral hearing officer will do what is fair. But without complete data, the room for mischief is enormous no matter how “fair” the hearing officer aspires to be. Without access to all the data and a chance to question it, people can be left with grossly unfair results; often without any understanding of how the result was calculated. 

In theory these inequities can always be resolved by going on to hearing. But to hold any proceeding in a setting where not all the data is in the room and available to all the parties, we are doing both the litigants and any minor children a major disservice. What makes this all the more critical is the gradual increase in self-employed and “gig” workers for whom real income is a mystery until revenue and “reasonable/necessary” business expenses are calculated. If your attorney is seen “acting out” about the absence of all the data and a chance to see how the support calculation is done, she is doing the right thing as your advocate.