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On September 5th, the public got even more insight into the now very public life of George Zimmerman (acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin) when his soon-to-be ex-wife filed divorce papers in Seminole County. In August, Shellie Zimmerman was found guilty of perjury and ended up with probation, plus 100 hours community service for her false statements regarding the couple’s finances during George’s bail hearings.

Sheila explained that the couple has been under intense scrutiny from “both sides” and identified the weakness of their marriage as two people fighting their own struggles to be heard by the other. She described their lives around the time of the trial and after as “living like gypsies” for security purposes with constant “babysitter” bodyguards looming over them.

The Zimmerman divorce, despite already being filed, likely hit a snag when on September 9th, Lake Mary police detained Zimmerman for a domestic dispute incident, which was resulted in a panicked 911 call by Sheila claiming George was threatening her and her father with physical violence and a gun. She further alleged George punched her father in the face during the confrontation. Sheila ultimately withdrew some of her statements, and charges were dropped against George.
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A recent case, involving a Pennsylvania man and his biological child living in Florida, demonstrated the significant differences that sometimes exist between science and the law. A Florida appeals court both denied the biological father’s effort to litigate his custody dispute in his home state, and foreclosed his efforts to make a claim anywhere regarding custody of the child. The man’s resounding defeat resulted from several shortcomings, including his flouting custody orders and, in particular, his lack of legal relationship to the child because the mother was married to another man at the time of the child’s birth.

The case revolved around a child born to a couple in 2004. The child’s birth certificate listed the husband as the father; however, he was not the father. The child was the product of the mother’s relationship with another man. The child resided with the maternal grandmother from birth. The mother died in 2008, still married to the husband. After the mother’s death, the grandmother sought custody and the husband consented. At this point, the father sought to intervene and asked the court to declare him the child’s father and award him custody. The trial court concluded that the husband had severed his parental rights by abandoning the child, declared the biological father the father and awarded him custody.

Following a reversal of the ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal, the grandmother re-obtained legal custody. The father, however, refused to hand over the child, and the child remained in his physical custody for a 12 month period during which he had no legal rights regarding the child.
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A Florida appeals court recently ruled that the interests of “justice and … equity” necessitated requiring an ex-husband to pay his ex-wife’s attorney’s fees in the child support action the wife initiated. The court’s ruling highlighted that, because the husband had a substantially greater ability to pay, and prolonged the trial court litigation through his failure to engage in full and prompt disclosure of his wealth, an award of attorney’s fees was proper under the statutory law.

The dispute began five years after the parents of two children divorced in 2005. The couple’s marital settlement agreement required the husband to pay family support in a flat amount from 2005-2010, and in accordance with the Florida guidelines thereafter. Unable to reach a negotiated agreement in 2010, the couple returned to court to determine the new amount of support. Despite having a net worth of nearly $5 million, the husband told the trial court he had little to no income. The trial court ultimately concluded that the husband had a monthly income of $25,000 and the wife’s income was less than $3,800.

The Orange County Circuit Court ordered the husband to pay $2,608 per month, but declined the wife’s request for an award of attorney’s fees. The trial court concluded that the wife’s 2010 action was an enforcement action related to the settlement agreement, and Florida law directed that she not receive attorney’s fees.
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Just five months after the death of Broward Circuit judge Susan Aramony, the South Florida community suffered another loss, as Amy Karan, a former Miami-Dade judge, passed away on Sept. 8. Karan, known as a judiciary leader in the area of domestic violence, was 54.

Karan, a Long Island native, received both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Miami. Karan’s professional career began as a family law practitioner, and she also served as an Assistant City Attorney in North Bay Village. She moved to the bench in 1997. There, she served for a dozen years before retiring in 2010. Karan retired early as her battle with the effects of Multiple System Atrophy, a rare form of Parkinson’s Disease, had begun to affect her ability to speak. In addition to her work on the bench, Judge Karan taught multiple courses at the National Judicial College and St. Thomas University.

A central piece of Karan’s legacy involved her leadership in the area of domestic violence, particularly the intertwining of domestic violence and guns. In 2007, while on the bench, Karan began requiring individuals subject to domestic violence injunctions to surrender not only their weapons but also their concealed weapons permits.
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Florida is one of only a minority states with laws that allow rape victims to avoid potentially complicated and difficult child custody battles with their attackers in cases where the rape results in the birth of a child. However, that number could rise substantially if Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has her way. The Florida Democrat led a bipartisan group that proposed the Rape Survivors Child Custody Act, which would use the lure of federal grant dollars to incentivize states to pass laws allowing rape victims to obtain sole custody over the children born as a result of their rapes, CBS Miami reports.

The bill, sponsored by Wasserman Schultz and Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican, would make states eligible for federal grant funds flowing from two programs established under the Violence Against Women Act, but would limit that eligibility to those states with laws that permit rape victims to go to court to prevent potential custody battles with their rapists.

A thinkprogress.org report stated that estimates place the number of rape pregnancies at approximately 32,000 annually, with more than 10,000 of those victims electing to raise their children. At a press conference related to the bill, Shauna Prewitt, a rape victims’ rights advocate, explained that rapists can use a pregnancy or child as leverage against the victim’s reporting or pursing her attacker by threatening to pursue joint custody of the child if the woman participates in a criminal prosecution of the rape.
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Under Florida law, an ex-spouse can request a legal modification of alimony. In a recent case, a couple had divorced after 28 years of marriage. On an appeal of the divorce judgment, the court reduced the husband’s alimony payments. In 2010, about a decade after the divorce, the former husband filed a petition requesting a reduction or termination of the payments, which were then $6,000 per month.

He argued that an order requiring him to pay permanent periodic alimony payments should be modified because (1) his financial circumstances had changed significantly and (2) his former wife was in a relationship with someone supportive. The former wife denied the material facts underlying the petition.

A general magistrate made a recommended order, finding a substantial change of circumstances since the husband’s income had been reduced. In his findings, he noted that he did not think this change was contemplated at the time of divorce and that the former wife was in a committed relationship. He recommended the alimony payments be reduced significantly, down to $1,294.06 per month.
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Father’s rights and paternity issues are hotly contested in Florida as in other jurisdictions. More weight is placed, in some cases, on Florida’s statutory definitions of family than on DNA tests, making it critical to get the help of an experienced Florida attorney.

In a recent case, a mother had given birth to a child in 2004 while married. The child was not born out wedlock and lived with his mother’s parents from birth. The parental rights of the mother’s husband were never terminated and he had an obligation to support the child. The mother died when the child was four. Her mother (the child’s grandmother) filed a petition for temporary custody. The mother’s husband gave written consent. The trial court awarded her temporary custody.

Meanwhile, another man filed a petition for determination of paternity in the same court. He did not meet the definitions of “parent” under Florida’s statutes, but he claimed DNA testing showed him to be the biological father of the child.
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One murder and one plotted murder both grabbed headlines this month in Miami and both involved the dissolution of the bonds of marriage.A Paranoid Plot
A Dania Beach husband, is being held in prison with his bail set at $5 million for his attempt to hire a hit man to murder his wife. The couple had been married for two years and all friends and family attest that the husband thought the world of the wife – paying for her cars, plastic surgery, and any extravagances she could ask for.

The two met at a strip club where she danced and soon after got married. The couple signed a prenuptial agreement to protect his assets. Over the next two years the marriage deteriorated and after the birth of their son, the couple became estranged. The son was kept in the wife’s mother’s room in the home at all times and she would not permit the husband to see the baby.
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Changes may be coming soon to Florida alimony law and the effects may retroactively extend to cases settled years ago. If a bill recently vetoed by Florida Governor Rick Scott is reintroduced for the 2014 legislative session, it will spark another long fight over how Florida’s “permanent alimony” system is enacted. Proponents of the bill include the “Florida Women for Alimony Reform” and “Family Law Reform”. They are supported by elected officials in the Florida House of Representatives like Representative Ritch Workman (Republican -Melbourne) who claim current laws have lead to situations “where alimony was used as a weapon by the judge to punish the person that they thought was wrong in the divorce,” an improper practice, considering Florida is a “no fault state”. A “no-fault” divorce means that specific grounds are not needed for divorce proceedings to be initiated, only that a marriage is “irretrievably broken” or there is a “mental incapacity” on the part of one of the parties in a marriage. These supporters of the bill believe current law in Florida allows for too much abuse and misinterpretation on the part of the courts.Although the bill passed the Florida House and Senate, Governor Rick Scott vetoed the bill, stating as his reason that the bill would retroactively affect past court decisions that granted alimony. Others have speculated that there is more to the veto, as a plan to pass a retooled version of the legislation that eliminated the bill’s effect on prior court decisions was not met with any response and text messages reported to have been sent between the State Senate President’s chief of staff and State Senator Tom Lee (Republican -Brandon) guess that the decision “may be larger than just the veto message”.

There are those who believe that the Governor issued the veto in an attempt to distance himself from what some call an “anti-women” reform plan. Despite the anti-woman label, there are women’s groups on both sides of the argument. The “Florida Women for Alimony Reform” claim the bill will be beneficial to the growing number of working women in Florida, while a group known as the “Frist Wives First” say they are trying to protect the many “lifelong caregivers” who rely on alimony checks to live, as they cannot find work after having been out of the workforce for so long.
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Child custody matters are not only a serious matter of concern for parents but also to the state of Florida. Florida has a legal and moral obligation to ensure its minor citizens are safe. Child custody matters are best handled by legal professionals but may be faced by parents who have had reports filed against them or by parents who, during divorce proceedings, are not found fit for custody.Violating child custody orders may lead to severe civil and criminal penalties in Florida. On Sunday June 28, a missing child alert was called off for a mother who kidnapped her two daughters who were the subject of a child services investigation.

The department attempted to seize custody of the daughters, aged 7 and 15, after the court issued a dependency shelter order having found them at risk in their mother’s custody. Upon visiting the home, they discovered that the family had disappeared. After a two week search, an anonymous tip led investigators to North Carolina where the mother had kidnapped and transported the children.

Broward county is seeing an unfortunate increase in the number of children removed from homes due to allegations of abuse or neglect. The total number removed by the Broward Sheriff’s office has increased from just over 1,100 children last year to an astonishing 1,525 children in 2013 (up through June 30).

The CEO of the private firm contracted to oversee foster care in the county, ChildNet, identified the spike as being quite significant but cannot point to a clear cause. Some contributory evidence that will be further investigated is the increase in hotline calls reporting abuse, a new administration staff at the Sheriff’s Office, and recent heavily publicized stories of child deaths by the hands of parents previously investigated by child services.

According to the Florida Department of Children and Families, 12 children have died in 2013 due to neglect or abuse in the homes of parents having a history with the department.

The most recent death was a two year old in Homestead. His father is now being charged with second-degree murder. The Department’s records list a long history of Project SOS services having been offered to the father. Project SOS was a social services initiative through the police department that attempted to address homes suffering from abuse and neglect.

In most cases, child services are not eager to remove children from the homes of their parents unless it is clearly unsafe, and will instead try to solve more of the root causes of the abuse or neglect before taking further steps.
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