Articles Posted in Custody/Time-Sharing

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For many parents, events in their lives may trigger within them a desire to reconnect with the children from whom they’ve become distant. Depending on the perspective of the child’s other parent, this may not always be easy. A recent case originating in Palm Beach County is a useful reminder to all Florida parents that, even if your desire to forge a closer relationship is strong, you cannot demand a change in your timesharing based solely upon proving that you’ve gotten your life in order. Simply getting your life back on track doesn’t amount to the sort of change in circumstances recognized by Florida law that would allow a court to change your timesharing schedule, according to a Fourth District Court of Appeals ruling.

The case, which involved ex-spouses C.R. (father) and S.R. (mother), was based on a complicated, although not entirely uncommon, set of facts. The husband and wife had one minor child together when they divorced in 2008. As part of that divorce judgment, the court ordered shared parental responsibility with the mother as the primary residential parent. The father had visitation twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

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Alimony reform in Florida is dead for at least one year after an April 15 veto of SB 668 by Governor Rick Scott. The veto represents the second time Scott has vetoed a bill that would have updated Florida’s alimony laws. While the most recent bill removed certain retroactivity provisions from the alimony reforms, which Scott cited as problematic in vetoing the previous bill, the governor again issued a veto, this time due to certain additional reforms addressing timesharing laws, which he said ran the risk of “putting the wants of a parent before the child’s best interest.”

Had it become law, the reform measure would have made several major changes in the way courts resolve divorce and child custody cases. The new law would have ended permanent alimony and would have set up alimony calculation guidelines as well. These guidelines would have assessed the amount and duration of alimony based upon each spouse’s income and the length of the marriage. The most recent bill also would have created a presumption in favor of alimony for all marriages except those lasting two years or less.

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When you fail to follow the judge’s instructions in a court order, there are usually negative consequences that happen as a result. A court can do many things to punish a party that does not follow court orders. One option — which is what happened in this case — is that the judge strikes the non-compliant party’s pleadings. That means that it is as if the party had never filed his complaint (or answer) with the court, at all. In family law cases, though, even if your spouse has his pleadings struck by the court, the law still affords him certain rights, and requires you to prove certain things, as a recent 5th District Court of Appeal case showed.

In that case, H.L. (husband) and R.L. (wife) were in the process of getting divorced. With any divorce action, the Florida court rules require each spouse to make certain disclosures to the other. These disclosures involve providing certain financial information and documentation to the other side to facilitate the case going forward.

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A mother whose custody arrangement with her daughter unraveled after an involuntary psychological commitment in 2010 achieved a measure of success in a recent ruling from the 2d District Court of Appeal. While the appeals court upheld a trial court’s decision regarding primary residential custody of the child, the appeals court struck down mandates barring the mother from speaking her native Spanish to the child and forcing the mother to pay the entire bill for the timesharing supervisor who was required to attend all of the mother’s supervised visitations.

The case involved the daughter of D.F. (husband) and his then-wife, P.F.. The couple, who married in 2003, split up in 2006 shortly after the daughter’s birth. The marital settlement agreement included a timesharing schedule in which the girl resided with her mother four days per week, and with her father for three days. The agreement also named the mother as the primary residential custodian.

The mother was involuntarily committed in 2010 for psychological reasons. The father went to court seeking an emergency order to revoke the mother’s timesharing and to have himself named primary residential custodian. The court entered the order. About a week later, the mother was released and began fighting to overturn the emergency order. What ensued was a protracted battle regarding decision-making, timesharing, who was responsible for paying the timesharing supervisor, and other related issues. The trial court issued an order that kept the father as primary residential custodian and imposed many restrictions on the mother.

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A recent case originating in Jacksonville led the 1st District Court of Appeal to throw out part of a trial court’s decision to modify a parenting plan and calculate child support. The evidence in the case did not show that a substantial change in circumstances had taken place to warrant a plan modification, and there was also insufficient evidence to support the manner in which the trial court calculated each parent’s income in arriving at the father’s support obligation amount.

The case centered around the daughter of T.B. (father) and V.B. (mother), a couple who divorced in 2005. In 2011, the father sought to amend the parenting plan. He also filed a motion asking the court to lower his child support obligation.

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One of the most frustrating things for a parent can be when the other parent does not comply with the parameters for timesharing established by the court. When that happens, the parent who has lost time with the child has certain legal options. It is important to understand what the law can and cannot do for you in these situations, and what you must establish to achieve a favorable outcome. One recent example of this was a case from Volusia County in which the 5th District Court of Appeal threw out a trial court order that modified timesharing in the father’s favor after the mother repeatedly failed to meet her obligations under the original timesharing order.

Originally, T.K. (father) and K.C. (mother) mutually worked out a timesharing arrangement regarding their child as part of a paternity action. However, 10 months later, T.K., a member of the military stationed in southern California, was back in court asking that K.C. be held in contempt. The mother, on three different occasions, improperly blocked the father from exercising his timesharing, according to T.K. The trial court held a short evidentiary hearing and concluded that the mother was in contempt for multiple violations of the parenting plan. The trial court awarded the father his attorney’s fees and court costs, and it also altered the parenting plan. Under the modified plan, each parent had the child 50% of the time, rotating in three-month intervals.
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A woman’s efforts to maintain a relationship with her daughter after she and her wife separated led an Orange County court to issue an order of protection for the daughter to stop the mother from stalking her. The Fifith District Court of Appeal threw out that injunction, though, ruling that the mother’s infrequent and non-threatening efforts to contact the daughter could not amount to stalking as defined by the Florida Statutes. The case highlights the importance of having substantial evidence specifically targeted to the law’s definition in order to prove stalking, as well as the often difficult position a non-biological parent in a same-sex couple faces when it comes to maintaining a relationship with her child after the marriage ends.

The parent accused of stalking was D.L., who had been in a relationship with C.P. for five years when C.P. became pregnant and had a daughter in the fall of 2002. Along the way, the couple entered into a civil union in Vermont in the summer of 2002 and married in Massachusetts in 2004. In 2007, the couple separated. D.L. continued to visit with the daughter for seven years until, on September 1, 2014, C.P. informed D.L. that the girl did not want to see her anymore.
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A Florida woman who raised four children together with her same-sex partner for several years lost her bid to obtain court-ordered timesharing with the two biological children of her partner. The 2d District Court of Appeal ruled that, even though the women had raised the children together for years, and they had an informal visitation arrangement for two more years after the relationship ended, the woman had no legal relationship with the children, so the children’s biological mother had a fundamental right to cut off and deny visitation to her former partner. Even though the law has recently changed in Florida regarding same-sex marriage, a marriage between the two women alone may have not saved the woman’s case, since she still would not have been a legal parent to the children. Only adoption would have guaranteed her rights, which was a choice that became available in Florida prior to the women’s separation.

The couple, S.R. and E.P., decided to start a family after several years together. The women purchased anonymous donor sperm, and, using that sperm, each woman became pregnant twice and had two children. The women raised the four children together as one family until their relationship deteriorated and, in the spring of 2011, they separated.
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A recent ruling from the 3d District Court of Appeal reversed a trial court ruling that modified a parenting plan to which both parents had agreed in 2012. Our office, representing the mother, persuaded the appeals court that this ruling was improper because it, despite the absence of an “actual, demonstrated emergency,” altered an existing parenting plan without giving both parents the chance to be heard by the court.

The case surrounded the custody and visitation of the son of H.W. (father) and C.W. (mother). The couple divorced in the summer of 2012, when the child was four. Before the divorce was finalized that summer, they agreed to a mediated marital settlement and parenting plan. Two years later, the father returned to court, asking for a modification in that plan.
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A recent 4th District Court of Appeal ruling withdrew the green light a mother previously received to take her child from Broward County and return to Nebraska. Even though the father did not challenge the relocation within the required 20 days, the law still allows courts to refrain from approving relocations if good cause exists.

The case focused on the dispute between A.V. (father) and M.H. (mother), who had a child together in 2008. In 2010, while the child lived with the mother in Nebraska, a court in that state created a parenting plan that gave the mother residential custody, with timesharing to the father, who lived in South Florida. Three years later, the mother and child moved to Florida to be near the father. The child was enrolled in Broward County Schools. Earlier this year, however, the mother sought court permission to return, along with the child, to Nebraska. The father’s lawyer filed a document opposing the move to Nebraska but did so after the 20-day period for responding to the mother’s request had passed.
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