Martindale-Hubbell
The National Advocates
The National Advocates
National Board of Trial Advocacy
The Florida Bar
Best Lawyers
Client Distinction Award
The National Advocates

Published on: | by

A Broward Circuit Judge’s order on December 17 granted to a South Florida art dealer something she sought for more than a year: a divorce. What made the judge’s in-court ruling groundbreaking was that the woman sought a divorce from her lesbian partner, with whom she had entered into a civil union in 2002. The ruling represents the first time a Florida court has issued a divorce to a same-sex couple and comes on the heels of a December 8 ruling, issued in the same case, declaring Florida’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional and unenforceable, the Miami Herald reported.

The former couple entered into a civil union in Vermont 12 years ago. In 2010, one partner allegedly became unfaithful and, shortly thereafter, disappeared. In order for the other partner to marry her new partner, she needed to obtain a divorce. In a similar case involving a Tampa couple, the lesbian couple married in Massachusetts but could not get a Massachusetts divorce because neither was a resident there by the time they decided to part ways. In the present case, she could not obtain a Vermont dissolution because Vermont law requires a signed affidavit from her partner, and she no longer knew the partner’s whereabouts.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

When faced with the possibility of awarding alimony, courts have a variety of options. The appropriate option may depend on various factors, including how long you were married. Whether you are the spouse paying alimony or the one receiving alimony, it is very important to understand what the law does (and does not) allow courts to do when it comes to an alimony award. Two Florida appeals court decisions from this year serve as examples of these limitations.

In a very recent decision, Diaz v. Diaz, the 3d District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of a husband’s appeal and overturned a trial court’s ruling with regard to the husband’s payment of alimony. The trial court in that case ordered the husband to pay the wife durational (temporary) alimony each month for 48 months. The flaw with this award was that the couple’s marriage had only lasted for a little more than three years (40 months.) Section 61.08(7) of the Florida Statutes says that durational alimony “may not be modified except under exceptional circumstances and may not exceed the length of the marriage.”
Continue reading ›

by
Posted in: Alimony
Published on:
Updated:

Published on: | by

Divorces are almost always difficult, but divorces that occur to couples with teenage children can be especially challenging. While a parent cannot control what his or her children feel or think regarding the other parent, he or she can help foster a healthy relationship by refraining from actively doing things to impede the children’s relationship with the other parent. One South Florida mother’s decision to engage in such counterproductive, hindering behavior ultimately earned her a judgment of contempt, which the 4th District Court of Appeal recently upheld.

When M. (husband) and L. (wife) divorced in 2011, they had three children together, some of whom were well into their teenage years. The couple’s divorce judgment called for shared parenting responsibility and established a timesharing schedule that placed the children primarily with their mother.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

In today’s world, personal and professional situations often dictate that individuals and families do not stay in one place forever. You may have lived in one state, and within a few years, you, your ex, and your children may have all moved away. When this happens, the rules of jurisdiction may limit what court may issue rulings on your case. A mother who had not lived in Florida since before she got divorced was able to get a court order modifying her ex-husband’s child support obligation thrown out recently based on these rules. Since the couple’s divorce and child support order came from California, and the mother had not done any of the acts required to give Florida courts jurisdiction over the case, the 5th District Court of Appeal decided that the Florida modification order was invalid.

A. (wife) and R. (husband) married in Florida and had one child born here in 2000. Soon after the child’s birth, the family relocated to California. The couple eventually divorced, obtaining a California judgment in 2005. That California resolution included a child support order relating to the couple’s child. In 2008, the father, who had returned to Florida, asked a court here to domesticate the California judgment, which means making the decision valid and recognizable in Florida. The father also asked the court to modify his child support obligation. The court agreed and entered the order.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

Sometimes, courts decide to award alimony to one spouse in a divorce based on that spouse having a much smaller income than the other spouse. The 2d District Court of Appeal received a case like this and reversed the trial court’s ruling requiring the husband to pay alimony. That’s because evidence of income disparity alone is not enough to justify an alimony award. The law requires proof of the recipient spouse’s need and the payor spouse’s ability to pay. The evidence in the case showed the husband did not have the ability to pay, so awarding alimony was erroneous.

M’s family law case was one similar to many people’s situations. While married, M and his now-former wife, T, had a child. They also reportedly racked up a considerable amount of debt, including credit card balances exceeding $10,000. Eventually, the couple decided to dissolve their marriage. By the time they split up, each spouse was  in a very problematic financial state, since each had debt obligations allegedly exceeding their incomes.
Continue reading ›

by
Posted in: Alimony
Published on:
Updated:

Published on: | by

A recent child custody battle represents the potential hurdles that can sometimes arise when trial courts attempt creative compromises. The 4th District Court of Appeal recently issued a ruling throwing out a trial court’s modified timesharing plan because the plan was something neither parent had proposed and neither side had any notice was a possible outcome.

A couple, K. and O., lived in Palm Beach County during their marriage and had one child together. After they split, the husband moved to the Florida Keys for work-related reasons. Initially, the child spent three days a week with one parent and four with the other. This timesharing plan had the benefit of giving the parents an approximately 50-50 split in timesharing, but it also presented a problem in that it required the child to travel 400 miles (round-trip) every week back and forth between Lake Worth and Bahia Honda.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

A woman who took her child and fled an allegedly abusive husband was unable to successfully move her divorce and child custody case to a court in her new home in South Florida. The 1st District Court of Appeal, while openly expressing sympathy for the woman’s difficult position, threw out an order transferring the case from Tallahassee to Miami-Dade County because, when the original divorce petition was filed, the couple had only lived in Tallahassee, making that location the only permissible place where the case could be heard.

The case regarded the difficult and allegedly violent breakup of the marriage of KM (husband) and TM (wife). The husband filed for divorce in September 2013 in Tallahassee, where the couple was living with their child. Shortly thereafter, a dispute reportedly erupted between the couple, and the husband allegedly punched the wife several times. The wife left Tallahassee and went to stay with her mother in Miami. The wife obtained a domestic violence injunction against the husband from a court in Miami-Dade County.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

Parties in divorce cases will, in many instances, submit proposed final orders to the trial judge. A recent 5th District Court of Appeal ruling serves as a reminder that, although these submissions are permissible and often helpful to trial judges, courts should be hesitant to adopt them in their entirety when the opposing side has no opportunity to comment or object. Additionally, parties are not entitled to forms of relief they didn’t ask for in their petitions, even if they raised the issues in their pre-trial documents.

The recent case involved CC’s filing for divorce from her husband, DC. The wife’s petition asked the court to dissolve the marriage, create a time sharing schedule for the couple’s child, award child support, and distribute the couple’s assets and liabilities.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

A woman who was the victim of a sex crime as a minor was allowed to seek a protective injunction when the man who committed the crimes was released from prison, even though the terms of the man’s probation forbade contact with the victim, according to a recent 4th District Court of Appeal ruling. Regardless of the prohibitions contained in the man’s probation, Florida law gave the victim the right to request the protective injunction and required the trial court to hold a hearing on her request.

In 2003, B. was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 10 years of probation for sexual battery on a person less than age 12. With B.’s release date this year drawing close, his victim, H., went to court to obtain an order of protection against him. The trial court dismissed both of H.’s protective injunction petitions without holding a hearing. The court reasoned that a protective injunction was unnecessary because of the terms of B.’s probation. If B. made contact with H., he would be in violation of his probation and would probably be returned to prison.
Continue reading ›

Published on: | by

In unfortunately too many cases, a child grows up “fatherless” because his or her father fails to assume his parental responsibilities or because the child’s mother does not know who the father is. But what about cases where multiple men have stepped up to claim fatherhood?

This was the issue presented to one Florida appeals court earlier this year when a married woman gave birth to a child conceived as a result of her extramarital affair. Even though everyone involved agreed that the wife’s extramarital partner was the child’s biological father, this ultimately did not matter. In cases where a child is born to a woman who is part of an intact marriage, biological paternity was “legally insignificant” to the determination of legal paternity, according to the 2d District Court of Appeal‘s ruling.
Continue reading ›

Contact Information
19790 W Dixie Hwy #412
Miami, FL 33180
Toll Free: 800.596.0579Phone: 305.932.6542Fax: 305.932.6453

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2026, Sandy T. Fox, P.A.
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design