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Generally, in order to obtain a modification in your timesharing agreement, both parents must be placed on notice that the court’s ruling may bring about a change in the current plan. In some situations, a court may alter the timesharing arrangement without notice if an emergency exists. The 3d District Court of Appeal recently overturned a Miami-Dade County trial court order because the mother did not have proper notice, and the conditions for an emergency change did not exist.

After several years of marriage, Tal Bronstein and Elizabeth Bronstein divorced in 2012. The couple had one minor child. By the time the divorce was finalized, the husband lived in Colorado.
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Divorce can bring out many complicated issues, particularly when it comes to money. On the one hand, a nefarious spouse may try to deplete assets before the case is finalized. On the other hand, spouses continue to have bills and financial obligations that often require dissipating marital assets to pay. Regardless of what a spouse’s true motives may have been, the dissipation of marital assets should only be included in an equitable distribution of assets if the trial court specifically finds that the dissipating spouse engaged in intentional misconduct, the 4th District Court of Appeal recently ruled.

Bonnie Jean Platt filed for a divorce from her husband, Minor J. Platt, Jr. While the case was pending, the wife allegedly took several guns and pieces of jewelry and sold them. After the sales, the court heard evidence regarding the value of the sold items, and it concluded that the guns were worth $6,500 and the jewelry had a value of $6,200. Having made this determination, the trial court then included that $12,700 as an amount that the wife received in calculating the couple’s equitable distribution.
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When a parent voluntarily chooses not to work, or to take a job that is below his or her true professional ability, the law calls for the courts to ascertain what that parent’s true earning capacity is in order to assess the proper amount of child support owed to that parent’s children. As a recent 1st District Court of Appeal case points out, the court cannot base its ruling on just any jobs, but only those jobs for which the parent is qualified and that are located in Florida.

The case involved a child support dispute between former spouses Glenn Broga and Linda Broga, who divorced in the summer of 2012 after 21 years of marriage. The couple had three children together. At trial, the wife brought a forensic economist, who testified about the husband’s earning capacity. Despite the husband’s being unemployed, the trial court imputed an annual income of $80,000, based at least in part on the economics expert’s testimony.
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In the most recent case involving same-sex couples who married in other states and seek to divorce in Florida, the 2d District Court of Appeal concluded that a southwest Florida trial court was wrong to dismiss a woman’s dissolution of marriage petition. The court ruling decided that, under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Florida courts should entertain same-sex spouses’ divorce petitions just as they would hear a petition for dissolution filed by a heterosexual spouse who married in another state.

This case involved Danielle and Krista Brandon-Thomas, who married in Massachusetts in the fall of 2012. Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to Florida, but the marriage did not last. Just a year after their wedding, Danielle filed for divorce in Lee County. Krista, in a position supposed by the Florida Attorney General, asked the trial court to throw out the case, arguing that Florida law did not recognize same-sex marriages and Florida courts had no power to dissolve that which, under the terms of the Florida Statutes, never existed.
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One of the more popular celebrity news stories of this spring has involved the impending divorce of renowned chef and Food Network TV star Bobby Flay, who filed to end his decade-long marriage to actress Stephanie March. According to a celebrity news website, TMZ, the couple signed a prenuptial agreement before their 2005 wedding, but the wife plans to challenge the validity of the agreement. While the dispute regarding the Flay-March prenuptial agreement will, unless settled between the spouses, be decided by a New York court, the story does raise a relevant issue for Floridians with prenuptial agreements who are contemplating divorce: namely, what are circumstances under which Florida law will prevent a prenuptial agreement’s enforcement?

Florida Statutes Section 61.07(7) sets out a list of several reasons why a prenuptial agreement can be set aside. If one of the spouses did not sign the document voluntarily, it is not enforceable. If a spouse received cash or other valuable assets in exchange for signing the prenup, that may allow for setting the agreement aside.
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Today, more than ever, the online world offers a multitude of ways to follow the actions of other people. The ability to be profoundly involved in another person’s life, against their will, without actually being near them is why states like Florida have laws against cyberstalking. An estranged husband’s alleged online activity, even though it raised the possibility that he hacked into his wife’s computer and Facebook account, did not meet the law’s definition of cyberstalking because he did not post anything specifically directed at the wife, the 2d District Court of Appeal recently ruled.

The backdrop to this case involved an estranged married couple, Sammie and Maureen H. Although the pair was estranged, they remained Facebook friends. As a result of this connection, the wife could see the husband’s posts on the social media site, including two disquieting ones. One was a private Facebook message conversation the wife had with a third party, and the other was the lyrics to the song “Secret Lovers,” a 1985 pop hit by the R&B group Atlantic Starr. The wife had recently been listening to the Atlantic Starr song on her home computer so, in her view, the husband could only have know about her music playlist and her private Facebook conversations by hacking into her computer and virtually spying on her. She testified that a keystroke logging mechanism was found on her computer, but she had no proof that the husband did it.
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Until just a few short decades ago, grandparents had no legal right to visit with their grandchildren. Today, many states have laws governing grandparents’ rights to visitation. While Florida law contains several strong protections with regard to the right of a parent (or parents) to raise their children as they deem best, even these strong protections do not give a parent a right to evade a valid out-of-state court’s order awarding visitation time to grandparents. Specifically, the 5th District Court of Appeal ruled in a recent Central Florida case that Florida’s right to privacy and policy of parental autonomy did not nullify a valid order of grandparent visitation from a Colorado court.

The case involved the minor children of Ruth Ledoux-Nottingham. The mother and father divorced in Colorado in 2010. A year later, the father died and shortly after his death, the mother and children moved to Florida. Before the mother and children left Colorado, however, the children’s paternal grandparents, William and Jennifer Downs, filed a court petition requesting visitation.
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The long-running and often contentious child custody dispute between pro basketball star Dwyane Wade and his ex-wife, Siohvaughn Funches, added a new chapter recently when the 3d District Court of Appeal issued a ruling upholding a timesharing decision made last year by a Miami-Dade trial judge. Although rejecting the mother’s appeal, the court warned lawyers on both sides regarding their behavior in email exchanges between the two sides. The case offers a reminder that, regardless of the amount of financial resources, child custody matters are often very emotional and hard-fought disputes.

Wade and his wife filed for divorce in 2007, which was finalized three years later after a long and arduous battle. During their marriage, the couple had two sons. In 2011, the father obtained a court order from a judge in Chicago granting him sole custody of both of the boys. The Illinois court’s custody ruling was domesticated to, and became enforceable in, Florida a year later.
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The protracted court case involving the medical care of a 4-year-old Palm Beach County boy took another turn recently, when the child’s mother refused to appear in court as ordered, leading Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen to issue a warrant for her arrest, the Sun-Sentinel reported. The case centers around the decision to perform a circumcision on the boy, which the father supports and the mother opposes. Counsel for the mother has argued that she is acting to protect her child, but the Florida courts have consistently upheld the father’s right to make the decision regarding the circumcision, as the mother voluntary relinquished this decision-making right as part of parenting plan agreement signed by the mother in 2011.

D. N. and H. H. welcomed a baby boy on Oct. 31, 2010. The parents later signed an agreed parenting order that stated that the father would handle all matters related to completing the child’s circumcision, including scheduling the appointment, transporting the child and paying for the procedure. The mother agreed to sign all necessary forms to permit the procedure to take place.
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If you’re a parent paying child support, while you undoubtedly desire to provide for your children, avoiding overpaying is also important, since being forced to overpay may impair your ability to be involved in your children’s lives in other ways, as well as impeding your ability to meet other financial obligations. That’s why it is often very important to understand the situations and criteria under which Florida law lets you go to court to seek a reduction in your child support obligation. One circumstance that can derail an otherwise valid petition for reducing child support is having a willful arrearage, as one Manatee County father found out in a case decided by the 2d District Court of Appeal recently.

When a Florida couple divorced in 2009, the husband was ordered to pay child support. By the spring of 2012, the husband had fallen behind, amassing a total child support arrearage in excess of $11,700. The husband was held in contempt of court at that time. Nearly a year and a half later, the husband returned to court seeking to reduce his child support obligation. The wife countered by asking the court to increase the child support amount and offered evidence that the husband’s back-owed child support amount had swelled to more than $24,000.
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