South Carolina Family Court: ‘Ring Around the Rosie’

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by ALLISON SHOEMAKER

***

“That’s my order…”

On July 2, 2025, those words separated me from my six-month-old son. I remember the moment viscerally. The courtroom. The stillness.

Suddenly, movement began in the chamber – counsel speaking quietly with court officers – and immediately thereafter I was physically blocked from entering the children’s center where my son was playing. No emergency had been declared. No finding of danger identified. No determination that I was anything but a fit mother.

Just a closed door between me and my child – and me not able to even say goodbye.

Seventy-two hours earlier, on June 30, 2025, a South Carolina court had vacated its own jurisdiction, a case it had already decided correctly. Within a day, New York stepped in and took control.

That is how quickly everything changed.

This should have been simple: My son was born in South Carolina and has lived there exclusively since birth. I have been his sole caregiver and de facto custodial parent as the unmarried mother, consistent with the parties’ agreement. Under the law, that should have been the end of the analysis.

It was not…

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WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS

***

In 2024, I ended a brief relationship shortly after learning I was pregnant. By July 2024, there was awareness that I was planning to move to South Carolina. On September 22, 2024, this move was acknowledged in a recorded call.

By November 10, 2024, I had returned to South Carolina to give birth and raise my child near my family.

Even during oral argument, powerful S.C. House speaker Murrell Smith – appearing as counsel opposite my attorney – referenced my move as occurring in November, after my October baby shower. That timeline was not in dispute.

During that same oral argument, reference was made to a social media post in which I mentioned being on maternity leave. I am typically very private and measured on social media, and that statement was taken out of context. At the time of that post, I was no longer on maternity leave, as reflected in my employer’s letter.

For months, South Carolina counsel at Burnette Shutt and McDaniel negotiated a custody agreement.

On December 20, 2024, it was signed. It stipulated:

• I would have sole custody
• South Carolina would have jurisdiction
• Child support would be paid under South Carolina law

Child support payments began on December 28, 2024 and continued until March 26, 2025.

This was not informal. It was structured, calculated, and drafted through counsel.

Everything pointed to South Carolina as the state of record.

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A TEMPORARY VISIT (AND A QUIET FILING)

***

In early 2025, I traveled to New York briefly for two road races (one in February, the other in March). These were planned, short term visits – part of my effort to get back into competitive running after giving birth. My return to South Carolina following these two races was always the plan.

On March 4, 2025, I sent the following message:

“Sunday is my race… the next week we’re planning on going to South Carolina.”

I also communicated my plan to return to South Carolina during my time in New York, including in prior conversations. There was no objection.

While I was in New York, though, a custody filing was made without notice. The New York apartment referenced in these filings was a rental property – one that had long been maintained as passive income.

***

The filing was not served. At the same time, child support continued to be paid under the existing South Carolina agreement.

After the second race, I returned to South Carolina on March 18, 2025 as planned. On March 21, 2025, I experienced pressure to return to New York for a mediation session under duress. At that time, I was living in South Carolina with my son.

Given the circumstances surrounding the end of my relationship, I was careful about sharing my whereabouts. During my pregnancy, I was listed under an alias at the hospital, and family and friends were (and still are) cautious about my privacy.

That moment was later used to suggest I had no residence, when in reality it reflected efforts to maintain my privacy.

***

THE ESCALATION…

***

After I refused to consent to New York jurisdiction during mediation on April 8, 2025, the posture of the case changed. On April 11, 2025, a writ of habeas corpus was filed in New York asserting lack of contact and a New York residence history.

Those assertions are disputed and addressed by communications and travel records submitted in the case.

When the full record was presented in the Palmetto State, the outcome was straightforward. On April 17, 2025, the court ruled that South Carolina had jurisdiction.

At that stage of the proceedings, all motions had been decided in my favor. That should have ended the case. Instead, it marked the beginning of its unraveling.

In May 2025, a motion was filed alleging fraud, as the only remaining procedural path after the appeal window had passed. The South Carolina order was a final order. Under the rules, a final order is ordinarily challenged through an appeal or, in limited circumstances, through a Rule 60(b) motion, which is reserved for specific grounds including a mistake, newly discovered evidence, or fraud.

The New York filings had already been disclosed.

What came next is hard to explain. On June 20, 2025, a proposed order was hand delivered directly to a judge’s secretary, bypassing the clerk’s office per the email.

On June 30, 2025, the court signed this order – vacating its own jurisdiction.

On July 1, 2025, I filed an appeal. The following day, I stood in a New York courtroom and watched my child taken away from me.

***

WHEN PROCESS USURPS FACTS

In New York, I did what the system requires. I filed a motion to dismiss. I submitted a full evidentiary record, hundreds of pages showing my residence in South Carolina, the signed custody agreement, the child support payments and the courts’ acknowledgment of jurisdiction.

None of it mattered.

The court declined to review the record and relied entirely on the June 30, 2025 South Carolina order, even as Palmetto State appellate stays were issued in July 2025.

At some point, the facts stopped being the issue…

In September 2025, when my mother attempted to obtain the South Carolina trial court file, a clerk in the records room insisted we obtain the appellate record from opposing counsel rather than from the court itself.

Opposing counsel is not the custodian of the court’s record. When we pressed, we discovered the file itself was incomplete. Key documents, including materials I had personally filed, were missing.

Only after repeated follow up via email did those documents reappear in a separate sub file.

No explanation for their initial disappearance was ever provided.

That moment made something clear: access to the record itself had become inconsistent.

***

POWER AND PROCESS

***

After motion practice had practically concluded, additional attorneys entered the case, including four lawyers – among them Murrell Smith. As speaker, he has publicly aligned himself with pro-life and pro-family policies.

His appearance in a case where a six month old child was removed from his mother through procedural maneuvering forces an uncomfortable question: what do those values look like when they meet real life?

I had prevailed on multiple motions. The record was not ambiguous. And yet, the outcome was the separation of an infant from their primary caregiver. When a sitting legislator steps into a case at that stage, it is not unreasonable to ask whether his influence – subtle or otherwise – has a place in a system that insists it does not.

While Smith has recently been at odds with Students For Life Action over legislative priorities, his involvement here reflects a similar dissonance. The public ethos is clear. The private outcome is something else entirely. Even members of his own party expressed disbelief, some going so far as to encourage me to challenge him politically.

That’s something I am considering…

***

THE APPEALS COURT DECIDES…

***

On March 24, 2026, the South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the decision to vacate jurisdiction under Rule 60(b) – arguing that I failed to disclose the New York case. But I did disclose it – fully, repeatedly, and in the original filings.

The New York filing was disclosed in my South Carolina motion on jurisdiction, including within the first twenty four pages of that submission.

The court nevertheless concluded that I moved in April 2024, relying in part on a single statement by counsel that I “live in South Carolina now.” That single line was given outsized weight, overriding the full context of the communication, intent repeatedly documented in child support filings, a signed custody agreement, audio recordings demonstrating intent and (last but not least) the consistent reality of where my child and I lived.

And absent any court order to the contrary, I remained the child’s de facto custodial parent.

Because appeals are limited to what was already in the lower court record, critical context could not be added later, including documentation explaining why I was listed under an alias at the hospital and why my whereabouts were and are intentionally kept private.

The result was a record that was incomplete in context, yet decisive in outcome.

As of this writing, I am compelled to stay in New York, unable to leave without risking further consequences to custody. Child support stopped in March 2025, leaving me with significant medical debt for my son.

I filed a motion for reconsideration. It was rejected.

***

RING AROUND THE ROSIE

There is a reason the nursery rhyme endures. It is about going in a circle, moving without resolution.

That is what my experience in South Carolina family court has become: a loop of filings, reversals, and decisions that drift further from the facts reflected in the record.

But systems built this way cannot hold indefinitely.

Eventually, the contradictions become too heavy.

And when they do, we all fall down.

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Allison Shoemaker is a writer, mother, and founder of The Persephone Project. A long distance runner and digital nomad, she writes from lived experience at the intersection of movement, motherhood, and systems, shaped by work across Fortune 100 companies and top law firms. Her work examines how personal narratives collide with institutional power.

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