On February 26 a Superior Court panel decided Hoover v. Lewis v. Cohen v. Lewis, a grandparent custody case involving a now 16 year old boy. That child was born in 2010 to two then teenagers. Father initially denied paternity. In 2011 he reversed course and sought partial custody. From 2010-2015 the child lived with mother in a trailer on land owned by maternal grandparents. Mother married in 2015 but it seems that relationship did not work out and mom and child were back at maternal grandparents. Then there was a move seemingly to be closer to paternal grandparents, even though the child’s father was never consistently involved. In August 2020 mother and father signed an agreement giving custody to paternal grandparents even though most of the child’s early development had been in and around maternal grandparents. Those maternal grandparents had filed to intervene in the custody action and it seems the agreed order to paternal grandparents may have been mother’s payback for their filing. We say that because eight months after giving the child to paternal grandparents by agreement, mother filed to resume primary custody. Three weeks after filing that petition mother took her life. Her son was 11 years old.
At the time of that tragic event, the grandparent battle for custody fully engaged. It incorporated not just the question of who had standing but also involved requests for various judges to recuse themselves. We also have the involvement of a guardian ad litem who never quite got to meeting all the litigants. Ironically, the court started issuing interim orders without first addressing who had standing in the underlying case. In fact, interim orders governed the child’s life for two years from the date of mother’s death before a final order was rendered. That order gave maternal grandparents primary custody with partial custody to paternal grandparents and to father. The involvement of father is best characterized by the order itself, which said if father did not show for his time, his parents could have it.
In every sense this case is a tragedy. A child born to parents who were themselves still growing up. A father who never really seems to have stepped up and a step parent relationship that dissolved. Then, the death of his mother marked by five years of fights over custody. This is precisely what we all hoped to end when Pa. R.C.P. 1915.4 was adopted a quarter century ago. 343civ.5attach.pdf
I wasn’t certain how to report the case until this past weekend when I watched the historical drama Hamnet. The movie begins with the birth of twin children to William Shakespeare and his wife Anne (Agnes in the film). The one twin seems to be stillborn, but Agnes essentially overrules that fate and her daughter comes to life. Years later that same child develops the bubonic plague and is in the throes of death. Her twin brother cuddles with her in what is thought to be his sister’s final moments. Fate strikes again and the daughter recovers while her twin brother (Hamnet) dies of the illness. Agnes is enraged by William’s absence in London at the time this occurs. He races back to Stratford to attend to his daughter only to learn his son is the one who has died. Agnes assumes her husband is indifferent to this tragedy until she attends the debut of her husband’s 1601 play Hamlet. There she learns the depth of his suffering and witnesses an audience of hundreds affected by the unexpected loss of this, their child.
In 17th century London and even 19th century New York City, nearly one third of children died before attaining the age of five. The movie depicts how this ever-present danger drew families together because the first rule of family life was survival. Today in the U.S. kids that age have a death rate of 7 per 1,000.
So much of family law is devoted to battles over ego and control. Here we have 16-year-old young man navigating the death of his mother, the departure of a step-father and the seeming indifferences of his father. As if that is not enough to burden a 10th grader, he has endured five years of warfare between grandparents who profess to love him but don’t seem to recognize the damage their pursuit of a “better outcome” has done to the child they profess to love and nurture. For those who have litigated child custody cases, in particular, there are days when a judge in the middle of a trial will summon the lawyers into chambers or a room outside the parties’ presence and ask: “Can you tell me what this is really about?” Until the movie industry launched in the late 19th century, it was common for hundreds of people to attend local courts while in session to watch the trials. It was real life theater. Sadly, elements of that world survive today.
Hoover v. Lewis 795 WDA 2025 (2/26/2026)