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Most “pet parents” understand that their dog, cat or other animal isn’t mere “property” but, rather, is a beloved member of the family. A person’s bond with their pet may be on a par with the bond they feel for their closest human loved ones. That love does, however, have a potential drawback for one group of people, which is people in abusive relationships. A victim of abuse may forego or delay leaving an abusive situation out of fear for the well-being, or the very life, of their beloved “fur babies.” A new law in Florida, however, has provided these people and their pets an added degree of protection through the system of injunctions for protection against domestic violence. If you are encountering abuse, don’t delay in reaching out to a knowledgeable South Florida family law attorney for options to protect your legal interests and your personal safety.

In late June, Governor DeSantis signed into law a bill that amends the Florida statute governing domestic violence injunctions. The new law expands the legal authority granted to judges in domestic violence injunction cases. Specifically, the bill added a new section to the statute, which says that a person who petitions successfully for a domestic violence injunction may potentially receive, in addition to temporary exclusive use of the couple’s home and 100% timesharing of the couple’s children, the “temporary exclusive care, possession, or control of an animal that is owned, possessed, harbored, kept, or held by the petitioner, the respondent, or a minor child residing in the residence or household of the petitioner or respondent.”

The court may also order the alleged abuser to have no contact with the animal. The law carves out exclusions for animals that are owned “primarily for a bona fide agricultural purpose” and for a service animal if the alleged abuser is the service animal’s handler. In other words, even if you provide the necessary proof to get a domestic violence injunction, you cannot, for example, take your sight-impaired abuser’s service dog or remove livestock from your abuser’s farm.

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For most people, their incomes are reasonably stable. They may experience one or two or three major “bumps” in earnings over a career, but their incomes mostly move on a gradual upward track. However, what do you do if your child’s other parent is one of those less common people whose income can change dramatically over short periods of time? For any parent that needs to pursue a child support case, but especially if you’re someone with an ex whose income is marked by dramatic and unexpected upturns, you need to make sure you have a skilled South Florida child support attorney handling your case.

There are several fields of work where earnings can be very volatile, such as actors, models and athletes. F.G. was one of those people. In 2005, he signed a rookie contract to play in the National Football League. At that time, F.G. had only minimal assets and was earning a relatively modest income consistent with the NFL’s “rookie contract” structure.

During that time, F.G. had a son with S.S. The father and mother established a mediated settlement agreement covering, among other things, child support. Six years later, the mother went back to court, asking for an upward modification in child support. While the father had always paid his child support, the mother argued that the modification was necessary.

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Family law is full of various rules, but few of them are completely black-and-white. The law recognizes that each family in a family law case is unique, and a just outcome should reflect that. That’s why having a skilled South Florida family law attorney is so important. Your experienced attorney will have that knowledge of all of family law’s nuances and gray areas that non-lawyers don’t, and know how to use them to your best advantage.

Very recently, this blog covered the issue of alimony and its relationship to the length of the marriage. That time, the wife was seeking permanent alimony after having been married for less than 13 years, or a marriage of “moderate duration.” (Florida law says marriages of seven years or less are “short term,” marriages lasting more than seven years but less than 17 years are “moderate” in duration and marriages of 17 years or more are “long term.”)

In law, including alimony law, there are “presumptions.” These are default positions that will be the final outcomes in most cases, but not in all of them. You can overcome a presumption if you have enough of the right evidence to do what’s called “rebut” the presumption.

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When you go through the divorce process and your spouse seeks alimony, you have several challenges. One of those is to avoid outcomes where your ex gets more alimony than they should, or gets it for a longer duration than Florida law says is appropriate. To help in making sure that your outcome is a fair one, get skilled legal representation from an experienced South Florida alimony attorney.

When it comes to the duration of alimony, the law has some pretty clear limitations on awarding permanent periodic alimony, which was on display in the case of B.P. and his wife, S.P. The couple married in 2003, separated in early 2014 and the husband filed for divorce in 2016. At trial, the judge concluded that the marriage was of moderate duration and that the wife was entitled to $6,912 per month in permanent periodic alimony, as that amount and duration was necessary “to maintain the standard of living to which” the wife was accustomed.

The husband successfully appealed the alimony ruling. As both the trial court and appeals court noted, B.P. and S.P.’s marriage was a “moderate-term” one under Florida law. (Florida law has created three different levels of marital duration that judges use in making alimony decisions. Those groupings are: “short-term,” which is seven years or less, “moderate-term,” which is more than seven years but less than 17 years, and “long-term,” which is 17 years or more. That duration period is measured as the period from the date of the marriage until the date of an approved filing for divorce.)

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people in many ways, including financially. Some may be struggling to keep their homes, while others may be struggling to feed their families. Some of those who have been thrown into dire financial straits here in Florida are people who have alimony obligations. If that’s you, the worst thing you can do is sit idly by and do nothing as you fall behind on your alimony. Instead, take action right away to get in touch with an experienced South Florida family law attorney and begin taking the actions that the law lets you take.

Even as Florida has re-opened most of its businesses, problems remain. Late last month, the government once again shuttered all bars, according to a NBC Miami report. You can imagine then, if you’re the proprietor of a popular bar in Fort Lauderdale Beach (from which you derive most of your income) and you’re also a divorced spouse who owes a monthly alimony payment, the re-closure of all bars in the Sunshine State is a source of major stress for you.

The law does still give you options, though. To get your alimony payments lowered, you will have to clear several legal hurdles. The first thing you absolutely must do is prove that you have a change of circumstances. Furthermore, that change has to be both (1) substantial and (2) something that could not have been anticipated when alimony was litigated (or set via a mutual agreement.) In other words, if you’re 63 years old when you sign your alimony agreement, you may not be able to turn around at age 65 and get a downward modification of alimony based on your retirement (and the reduction in income it created.)

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You’ve probably heard of ”prenuptial agreements” and perhaps “marital settlement agreements,” too. Another agreement, slightly less well-known but no less important, is the “postnuptial agreement.” Each of these three types of legally binding agreements can be very powerful tools and have a very substantial impact on you should you go through a divorce. For those reasons (and others,) it is important to have a knowledgeable South Florida family law attorney on your side to advise you on the differences and how best to protect yourself and your family.

A prenuptial agreement is, of course, an agreement made in anticipation of marriage and a marital settlement agreement is made in anticipation of an order of divorce. A postnuptial agreement is something, however, that a couple can create either in anticipation of divorce (as the marriage is breaking down) or while the marriage is still vibrant and intact.

A recent case from Palm Beach County highlighted some of the differences between each of those agreements in terms of enforceability and the importance of those differences. The case involved G.S. and D.S., who married in 1977 but separated for a time in the mid-1990s. They eventually got back together and, in late 1996, they signed an agreement that dealt with the distribution of certain assets in the event of a divorce. At that time, the pair was married, living together and not even thinking about getting divorced.

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When a marital relationship breaks down, that breakdown can cause some spouses to respond in a hyper-adversarial way, especially if there are children involved. They may try to lay hands on all kinds of privileged information, such as your past medical history and treatments. Often, this evidence is irrelevant and inadmissible, but you still need to know how to go through the correct legal steps to avoid having to divulge this very private and sensitive information. The right South Florida family law attorney can be instrumental in keeping your private medical information private.

S.R. was a mom caught in that kind of circumstance. After she filed for divorce, her husband, T.R., sought to force 11 medical providers, each of whom allegedly had provided medical, psychological or psychiatric care to S.R at some point, to divulge their records of any such treatment. The husband asked for a wide range of disclosures, including “notes, prescriptions, treatment records, consultation reports, lab reports, blood work reports, office notes by staff of the facility and any electronic records maintained during the course of treatment.”

In addition, the husband also asked the court to order S.R. to disclose all the records she possessed pertaining to “medical and/or psychological and/or psychiatric treatment or counseling” she’d undergone in the previous five years.

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When it comes to planning, nothing is more important than doing the planning necessary to protect your family. By retaining the services of a skilled South Florida family law attorney, you can be sure you have the right “safety net” to protect your most priceless treasure: your relationship with your children.

No one wants to think about planning for a potential breakup of their new marriage or newly expanded family, but that’s when you should begin planning to give yourself the “safety net” your family needs. If you’re a gay or lesbian parent whose children are the biological offspring of your spouse/partner but have no biological link to you, it is especially important that you do the proper planning to protect your relationship with your children.

It may be easy to think that, when the U.S. Supreme Court made its marriage equality ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges case five years ago, all of the unique risks that LGBT+ parents face went away, but that’s simply not true, and a recent case from the Orlando area just further highlighted that fact.

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Having representation from a skilled South Florida family law attorney offers many benefits, including being fully prepared to take on whatever unexpected twists or changes occur in your case. Sometimes, the facts of your family law case may be very straightforward and stable but, other times they may turn “on a dime.” In either case, but especially in the latter, having the right legal counsel can help you to respond to these surprise twists in the way that will best benefit your case.

A few areas where sudden changes can have drastic consequences are child support and alimony. If your ex (whom you did not know was even in a relationship) abruptly and unexpectedly gets married, then that sudden change may significantly reduce (or even eliminate) the amount of alimony and/or child support you owe. But… what happens if that sudden change happens after your hearing but before the court enters its final judgment? Can you still seek a recalculation based on that change or has unfortunate timing left you out of luck?

As a recent case from the Tampa area shows, you absolutely still have options that you can – and should – use. In that recent case, the main issue in dispute was child support and imputed income. Imputed income is what happens when the court calculates one spouse or parent’s income at some higher amount than their actual income.

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Alcohol abuse is a problem that affects millions of families across the U.S. A branch of the federal Department of Health and Human Services did a study that revealed that in excess of 10% of children in this country “live with a parent with alcohol problems.” When a parent with alcohol problems goes through a divorce, that problem may make working out a parenting plan more complex. Whether you or your ex-spouse is the parent is the one with drinking issues, it is important to recognize that there are certain things you can do within your parenting plan to address the problems, but there are also limits on your options. As you work through these difficult issues, it is invaluable to have a knowledgeable South Florida family law attorney to give you the thoughtful legal advice and effective advocacy your family needs as you set up your parenting plan.

A family from Broward County who recently went before the Florida courts is an example of the many facets of these cases. The mother filed for divorce after nine years of marriage, citing the father’s drinking. The mother asked the judge to order a parenting plan that awarded her majority timesharing along with ultimate decision-making authority, and that limited the father to supervised visits. The father argued for unsupervised visits and shared decision-making.

The judge ultimately awarded the father unsupervised visits, but made them conditional on his refraining from drinking. To make sure the father was abstaining, the plan called for the father to undergo blood-alcohol content (BAC) testing at the beginning and end of each visit. The judge also gave the mother the right to demand, at her discretion, ”periodic and immediate BAC tests,” even when the father didn’t have the children. The order further demanded that the father pay 100% of the costs associated with all of the BAC testing.

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