Religion can be an issue with divorced spouses of differing faiths. Interfaith marriage is more and more common and thus interfaith divorces strain the party’s decision making regarding the religious upbringing of the children during divorce. At times, the decision a married couple makes about exposing children to religion changes after the divorce process. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the exposure of children to various religions can cause passionate and righteous disagreement between the divorced parties.
In the Commonwealth Zummo v. Zummo, 394 Pa. Super. 30, 574 A.2d 1130 (Pa. Super. 1990) has been the lodestone of the Court’s determinations regarding religious differences.
The facts of Zummo, elucidate the problem of religious differences in divorce but highlight the rule that both parties should be allowed to expose their children to various religious faiths. The children’s mother was Jewish and the father was Catholic, and at the time of the divorce, the children were eight, four, and three years’ old. During the marriage, the family participated fully in Judaism by agreement. The father was not particularly observant regarding his Catholicism and the children were not exposed to it in any way.
When the parents separated, the father stopped bringing the oldest child to religious school during his custodial time (the other two children were not yet old enough to start). The parents asked the trial court to determine how much Jewish religious school the child was obligated to attend during his custody. The trial court held that Father must take the children to religious school even during his periods of partial custody and prohibited the father from bringing the child to Catholic services.
The Court held “that each parent must be free to provide religious exposure and instruction, as that parent sees fit, during any and all period of legal custody or visitation without restriction, unless the challenged beliefs or conduct of the parent are demonstrated to present a substantial threat of present or future, physical or emotional harm to the child in absence of the proposed restriction. This standard requires proof of a ‘substantial threat’ rather than ‘some probability.” This Court noted further that “while the harm involved may be present or future harm, the speculative possibility of mere disquietude, disorientation, or confusion arising from exposure to ‘contradictory’ religions would be a patently insufficient ’emotional harm’ to justify encroachment by the government upon constitutional parental and religious rights of parents, even in the context of divorce. Thus, in Zummo the Court ruled that a parent can-not be prohibited from exposing children to the various religions of the parents.[1]
[1] Parts of this article refer to the P.J.A. v. H.C.N., 2016 Pa. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 511, *22-25, 141 A.3d 598, 2016 WL 661752 (Pa. Super. Ct. Feb. 18, 2016) Decision.