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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 wife fighting to avoid using her alimony to pay a lien imposed by her former divorce lawyer must return to a Broward County trial court to continue litigating the matter. The 4th District Court of Appeal concluded that whether or not the attorney’s lien was enforceable against the wife’s alimony award depended on whether the alimony was needed to pay for the wife’s “daily sustenance or the minimal necessities of life,” or whether it was used to cover less basic expenses.

The case began when M.T. (wife) filed for divorce from her husband, L.T.. The wife sought, among other things, an award of alimony in order to maintain the lifestyle to which she had been accustomed. The wife hired an attorney, but, three months into the relationship, the attorney and the client parted ways. Ultimately, the divorce case proceeded to its conclusion. The trial court’s ruling included an award of alimony to the wife.
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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 South Florida woman’s pursuit of a permanent injunction for protection from domestic violence against her former partner of 13 years was not yet at its conclusion after the 3d District Court of Appeal threw out a trial court’s decision entering the injunction. The woman, at her permanent injunction hearing, brought up incidents of violence that she had not mentioned in her injunction petition. By allowing her to testify to these previously undisclosed incidents, the trial court denied the man his due process rights to receive fair notice of the charges against him. All was not lost for the woman, though, since the appeals court reinstated her temporary injunction for protection and awarded her a new hearing where she could re-introduce the improper evidence as long as she amended her petition first.

O.L. and Y.C. were a couple from 1997 to 2010. Their relationship produced three children. Unfortunately, as happens with some couples, the relationship ended…and ended badly. In September 2010, Y.C. went to court seeking a domestic violence protective injunction. The trial court issued a temporary injunction, which was extended several times until the court convened a final hearing in 2013. At that final hearing, Y.C. alleged several instances of domestic violence carried out by O.L.
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A recent 1st District Court of Appeal ruling provides insight upon all the analysis that must go into an a award of attorneys’ fees in a dissolution of marriage case. Awarding fees and costs requires finding that one spouse has a need for such an award, and the other spouse has the ability to pay. In the recent case, the trial court’s alimony award to the wife essentially equalized the incomes of both spouses, meaning that each spouse had an equal ability to pay and, as a result, the husband should not be required to pay his wife’s attorneys’ fees and costs.

The decision came in the case of R.H. (husband) and H.H. (wife), who decided to divorce after 36 years of marriage. At the time of the couple’s divorce trial, the husband’s annual income was $89,000, and the wife’s was $39,000. The trial court ordered the husband to pay the wife alimony in the amount of $2,100 per month for 12 years. The trial court also decided that the husband should pay the wife another $6,000 for her attorneys’ fees and costs.
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An important new Florida Supreme Court decision helps clarify the applicability of waivers in prenuptial agreements. The court concluded that, if a prenuptial agreement’s terms made it clear that a spouse was waiving and releasing all rights and claims to the other spouse’s separate property, that waiver included the increase in value of those non-marital assets, even if the agreement did not expressly cover increased value, and the increase was due to marital efforts or funds.

The case brought to a conclusion the divorce dispute between H.H. (husband), a mortgage broker, and his wife, D.H. The couple married in February 1986 and remained married for 22 years. The month before their marriage, both spouses signed a prenuptial agreement. The agreement stated that, if the spouses purchased a property in both their names, the asset was presumed to be owned 50-50 between them, but if the husband purchased an asset in his own name, even during the marriage, that asset was his separate property.
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Creating an equitable distribution between divorcing spouses can often be complex. This can be especially so when one or both spouses hold nonmarital assets that are subject to mortgages and use marital assets to make the mortgage payments on those properties. In the case of one Southwest Florida couple, the 2d District Court of Appeal ruled that the wife should received an offset because, even though the husband’s property declined in value during the marriage, his equity in the asset increased as a result of paying down the mortgage using marital funds.

In this circumstance, R.S. (husband) bought a building in Queens, NY in 1998 that housed two residential apartments and a commercial space. By the time the building owner married his wife, M.S., in 2007, the value of the building stood at approximately $900,000. Shortly before the couple separated five years later, the husband sold the building for $680,000. At the couple’s divorce trial in Fort Myers, the court concluded that the building did not appreciate in value during the duration of the marriage.
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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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Sometimes a parent’s mental illness can present a substantial challenge within the family and, in some cases, may even make contact between parent and child unhealthy for the child. A court that views contact between parent and child as not in the child’s best interest can reduce or eliminate this contact. A court, however, cannot do so without giving that parent the “road map” that is required in order to resume an active relationship with the child. A Lee County trial court’s failure to give a father such directions ultimately resulted in the 2d District Court of Appeal’s reversal of the trial court’s custody decision.

The case involved Larry and Susan Niekamp, who divorced in 2013 after 22 years of marriage. The couple had two children together. During the divorce trial, a psychologist testified that the father had major depression, anxiety, and avoidant personality disorders, and that these conditions had harmed his relationship with his children. The trial court appointed Dr. Jason Sabo to oversee a “therapeutic reunification” between father and children. However, in the subsequent final order granting the divorce, the court gave the mother sole custody, declining to award the father any contact at all with the children. The court ruled that contact between father and children was not in the children’s best interests “for the time being.”
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