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Child Custody and Support

Navigating Child Custody: A Comprehensive Guide for Parents

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To understand the complexities of child custody, and what courts look at when considering custody, it is important first to know what child custody actually is. While we often use “custody” to mean everything, in reality, it has a specific meaning.

What is Custody?

Navigating Child Custody

Custody over a child generally means the ability to parent the child, and to have a meaningful parental say in the decision-making process over the important things in the child’s life. That includes making medical decisions, decisions about school, healthcare decisions, and even the day today decisions that a parent makes about how a child will be raised.

In almost every divorce (or paternity) case, parents will share custody. It is very rare for a court to take away these crucial parental rights from either parent, although it can happen in very extreme cases. But in most cases, it is not custody that parents are fighting over—it is time-sharing.

Understanding Time-sharing

Time-sharing is the actual time that each parent will have with the kids—more specifically, how many nights per week or per month the child will spend overnight with either parent. Because time-sharing is different from custody, a parent may have less time-sharing (meaning, fewer overnights with the kids), but an equal right to raise, and make decisions for, the children.

There are 20 different factors that a court can consider, when making decisions over time-sharing. Note that today, courts tend to favor giving equal nights to both parents through a 50-50 schedule (there are many different 50-50 schedules that parents can opt to use, many of which are worked out in mediation sessions between the parents).

But based on the decision of certain statutory factors, courts can and do deviate from that 50-50 schedule, providing more time-sharing to one parent over the other.

Cooperation And Civility Between Parents

The ability to abide by a time-sharing schedule, and the ability to be flexible to necessary changes, is a big factor; the parent more likely to do this, would have an advantage.

In short: courts do not favor parents who demean the other parent, are hostile to the other parent, or who cannot humanely and peacefully co-parent with the other parent.

This includes parents who talk negatively about the other parent to the child or who involve the child in the legal matters surrounding the parents. Courts will favor the parent who keeps the children out of parental disputes and the parent who is civil to the other.

Stability for the Child

Courts will also look to which parent provides the most stability for the child. That may not be based on you, as a parent, but it could be based on your situation. For example, if mom lives closer to the child’s friends, or her location allows the child to keep going to the child’s school, mom would have an advantage. Parents who live closer to the child’s grandparents and other relatives to the child, may have an advantage.

Similar to this will be how the child is doing in their current environment. If the child is doing well, courts will be hesitant to upset the child’s life.

Stability also means which parent has established (or is capable of establishing) structure for the child’s life. Which parent can enforce homework times, discipline routines, or bedtimes? It is great to be the “fun parent,” but courts do look to which parent can provide discipline in structure in the child’s life as well.

How Well Do You Know Your Child?

The Court also will want to know how much each parent has knowledge about the child’s life.

That may seem obvious, but courts will look to which parent knows who the child’s friends are. Who the child’s favorite teacher is. What the child’s favorite sport is. What health conditions the child has.

All of these things—even things that are seemingly trivial—make a difference and the parent who knows these things about the child has an advantage in a time-sharing or custody dispute.

It’s not just knowledge either. The law allows a judge to look at which parent has actually been involved in the child’s life. Which parent has a history of going more often to the child’s sporting events, extracurricular activities, or parent-teacher meetings?

Morals and Ethics of the Parents

Moral behavior is also a factor. That is not to say that the Court is judging you as a person, and mudslinging against the other parent can do you more harm than good in a time-sharing or custody dispute. But yes, the Court will judge your morals, but only to the extent that they impact the child.

So, for example, the Court may not penalize you for using drugs, or for committing adultery. But if the court feels that these habits or lack of morals may affect the child, or that the child may be exposed to them, or that they impact the child’s environment when the child is with you, then these things could have a significant impact on a time-sharing decision.

Your Health

Courts will also look at the mental and physical health of the parents. That is not to say that you cannot have some limitations, and a diagnosis does not mean you are not qualified to raise your kids. Almost everybody has some mental or physical medical history. Courts are more interested in whether any physical or mental limitation, could affect your ability to raise or care for the child.

Domestic Violence

The statute does allow the court to look into “prior actions” related to domestic violence or child abuse. Note that the statute doesn’t say “convictions,” which means that allegations, restraining orders, or other information about abuse, to either parent or child, can be considered by a court.

What About What the Child Wants?

In some cases, the child can be asked how he or she feels, but that is rare, and only in cases where the child is old enough or mature enough to make his or her own decisions. A child will never be asked “who do you want to live with,” but the child’s opinions about which parent does what, can be considered.

If the child is not old enough, then a guardian ad litem can be appointed to spend time with, and evaluate the child, as well as both parents’ home environments, to make a recommendation and speak on behalf of the child.

You may contact Anthony Diaz by calling 407-212-7807 or by email an*****@************aw.com or visit anthonydiazlaw.com for more information.

And if you found this article helpful, please leave us a review HERE.

Child Support: Five Frequently Asked Questions

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Child Support Umbrella

When you are getting divorced with children, there may be a lot of conflicts about which parent will get more time with the kids. But with kids comes another issue when it comes to divorce — child support. Child support is often misunderstood, and there are commonly a lot of questions about child support. Here are five of the most common questions people have.

How is Child Support Calculated?

Florida law first establishes a grid that says how much total support (that is, money from both parents combined) that a child needs or requires. That support figure is based on the combined income of both parents; the more the parents make, the more the total support figure will be. It is also based on the number of children; more children will require more total support from both parents.

Of course, the total amount the kids need is usually not a point of contention (nor can it be, as it is written into the law)—the real argument often happens with parents deciding who will pay what portion of that total support amount. That’s where the child support formula comes into play.

Child support is calculated with a preset formula, which is established by Florida law. There is some room for a court to deviate from the formula—to adjust a parent’s child support obligation up or down—but not a lot of room to do so (only 5%).

The percentage each parent pays of the total amount of support the children need is based on each parent’s income. This is why, although the formula is already determined by law, couples often fight over child support: A parent’s child support obligation, according to the formula, will deviate and go up or down depending on what income numbers you put into the formula.

The formula is thus designed, to some extent, for the parent who makes more income to pay more child support. But that is not the only consideration: Time-sharing, or time the children spend with each parent, also plays into the child support equation.

When a parent has more nights with the children on a monthly basis, that parent is more likely to receive child support. That is because, logically, when the child is with that parent, that parent is paying for more of the child’s expenses, and that parent deserves to be reimbursed by the other parent for those expenses.

How is a Parent’s Income Determined for the Purpose of Child Support?

In the process of the divorce, each party will fill out full financial affidavits. These affidavits will identify all sources of income, as well as the value of assets owned by each parent, as well as expenses that each parent has.

Yes, people can—and unfortunately do—lie on their financial affidavits. You have the right to ask for proof of income from the other parent beyond the financial affidavit. That may include business income records, bank account records, or other documents showing what the other spouse may be making, spending, or depositing into bank accounts.

What Can Child Support Be Used for?

The law only says that one parent pays the other child support. It does not specifically require that the receiving parent use the money for the kids, nor does the law require any kind of accounting of how the funds are used. The law just assumes that if a parent is with a child, that parent is necessarily spending money on the child, and thus, whatever is paid in support is reimbursing that parent (at least in part) for those expenses.

How Long Will Someone Pay Child Support?

By law, child support either ends at the age of 18 or when the child graduates high school but must end at the age of 19 unless certain special circumstances exist. If a child is not currently on track to graduate high school, support will end when the child is 18, regardless of graduation.

Note that child support can continue beyond these time limits for children who may have special needs or disabilities. In fact, child support could go on indefinitely for children who have special needs. However, the establishment of longer-term child support must be established during the divorce or custody proceeding—you cannot wait until child support ends and then go back to the court and have it continued.

Can Child Support Be Changed or Modified Later?

Child support can always be modified with the required legal showings. The modification could increase or decrease child support.

To modify child support, the parent seeking to modify must show what is known as a “substantial change in circumstances” that is permanent.

That means that a parent’s temporary increase or decrease in income will not suffice to modify child support. Likewise, a minor change in a parent’s financial situation also won’t legally warrant a change in child support.

Either the paying or receiving parent can ask the court to modify child support—but if you are the paying spouse, you cannot just unilaterally lower your child support. You must get and obtain a court order lowering child support payments before changing what you pay in support.

The change in a parent’s situation may not just be financial. Often, a parent ends up spending more or less time with a child than the original divorce agreement or court judgment initially contemplated. When a parent ends up with more time with the kids than he or she was supposed to get, that parent may have a right to go back to court and ask for more child support, to have the support based on the increased time that that parent is having with the children.

Again, the change in time-sharing can’t just be an occasional or one-time occurrence; the change must be permanent and ongoing to warrant a substantial change in circumstances that is sufficient to show that child support should be increased or decreased.

Do not guess about your child support. Anthony J. Diaz is an experienced family law attorney focusing on Mediation and Collaborative Divorce. His offices are located at 2431 Aloma Ave Suite #124, Winter Park, FL. 32792 and 3720 Suntree Blvd., Suite 103G, Melbourne, FL. 32940.

You may contact Anthony Diaz by calling 407-212-7807 or by email an*****@************aw.com or visit anthonydiazlaw.com for more information.

And if you found this article helpful, please leave us a review HERE.

How Does the Court Determine Child Custody?

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If you are getting divorced and there are children of the marriage, you may worry that you will lose custody of your children. Both parents, understandably, often want to keep and foster a meaningful relationship with the children after the divorce is finalized and may worry about how they will prove to a court that the children of the marriage should remain with them.

Compound this very real concern after seeing the custody battles that are shown on TV and in the movies, and it is no wonder that divorcing parents become so fearful over a protracted custody battle.

What is Custody Anyway?

The first thing to remember about child custody is what it actually means and the difference between custody and timesharing or visitation.

Unless you are completely unfit and have your parental rights terminated by a judge, you always have custody of your child, regardless of where the child is located. In other words, even on the nights when the child is with mom, dad still has “custody” of the child, in the sense that he can make the core, basic decisions about raising the child that any parent has.

As a general rule, unless a parent presents some danger or is completely unfit, both parents will have shared joint custody of the child regardless of how many nights the child spends with one parent or the other.

Time-sharing

‘Visitation’ is an old term that is not used as much anymore by the law or by courts. Today, courts use the term ‘time-sharing,’ representing how many nights the child will spend with one or another parent over the course of a week or month.

Parents can have equal time-sharing on a 50-50 basis, or one parent can have more nights per week or month than the other, in which case that parent would have the majority of parenting time.

Time-sharing is where most of the arguments in child custody cases arise; both parents often want as many nights with the children as possible and will often argue, alleging that it is in the children’s best interests to spend the majority of overnights with one parent or the other.

Factors to Determine Time-sharing

So, how does a judge determine how many nights in a given week a child will spend with one parent over another?

The test is simple; the court looks to the best interests of the child to see whether those interests are best served by the child having the majority of overnights with mom, dad, or shared equally between both.

Note that the court is not trying to find that one parent is “bad” or “harmful”; in many cases, both parents are able and fit, but the circumstances, lifestyle, or another component of one parent’s life just make it in the child’s best interest to spend more overnights with that parent.

For example, one parent may live closer to the child’s friends, may have a larger familial support system, may live in a home that has more room for the child, or may work a job that allows them to spend more time with the child. The other parent is not harmful or unfit at all—it is just that one parent’s life is set up in a way that is better for the child.

Defining the Best Interests of the Child

Still, the “best interests of the child” can admittedly be vague, so the law has set up some guidelines that judges use to see what is in the best interest of the child.

Cooperating and Keeping the Peace

One major factor is which parent is simply more cooperative—in plain terms, which parent is less argumentative, more likely to foster a meaningful relationship with the other parent, or more likely to meet the other parent’s requests for last-minute changes. In plain terms—can you get along with the other parent and cooperate with them?

This punishes parents who argue, fight, or harbor hostility toward the other parent—or worse, who may use the child as a pawn to get back at the other parent, or who may put the child in the middle of arguments between parents.

How Much Time Do You Have?

Courts will also look at your time. There is nothing inherently wrong with using babysitters or other caretakers. We all know that parents, especially single parents, may need to work long hours.

But the parent who seems like they will have the most time to dedicate to the child when the child is with that parent will have some advantage in a custody or time-sharing dispute.

Continuity

The continuity of the child’s lifestyle is an important factor, as well. Courts do not want to uproot a child from their school, family, friends, or extracurricular activities. A parent whose lifestyle is one that seems like it will facilitate that continuity will have an advantage in child custody cases.

Morals and Ethics

The moral fitness of parents will be looked at, as well. Certainly, a parent who does a little gambling, who may drink socially, or who has a casual intimate relationship should not have their fitness as a parent questioned.

But there are circumstances where one parent’s lifestyle brings their ability to parent into question. Worse is a parent that exposes the child to that behavior.

For example, a court probably would not punish a parent who smoked marijuana. But a parent who did it in front of the child, or who left marijuana paraphernalia where the child can find it, or who was under the influence of marijuana at the child’s sporting event may have their parental decision-making questioned in a custody case.

Involvement Level

A parent’s level of involvement in their child’s life is a big factor in determining custody.

In a typical child custody case, a parent may be questioned about how much that parent knows about the child’s life. The court will favor parents who are involved enough in the child’s life that they understand what the child likes and does not like, who their friends are, what their favorite school subject is, who their favorite athletes are, etc.

Any Other Factor

Judges actually have the power to look at almost any factor when determining what is in the best interests of a child. So long as you can explain why something is relevant to custody or parental time-sharing, if the judge agrees, they are allowed to take it into consideration.

We can help you understand how to get an advantage in your child custody case and answer your questions about your relationship with your child after your divorce.

Anthony J. Diaz is an experienced family law attorney focusing on Mediation and Collaborative Divorce. His offices are located at 2431 Aloma Ave Suite #124, Winter Park, FL. 32792 and 3720 Suntree Blvd., Suite 103G, Melbourne, FL. 32940.

You may contact Anthony Diaz by calling 407-212-7807 or by email an*****@************aw.com or visit anthonydiazlaw.com for more information.

And if you found this article helpful, please leave us a review HERE.

What is the Difference Between Alimony and Child Support?

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When couples are getting ready to divorce, their mind often turns to financial concerns—specifically, how much they will have to pay to the other spouse or how much they can expect to receive from the other spouse. They often just lump what they might have to pay, or what they are paying, into one giant payment in their minds. But in reality, there are two distinct areas where someone may be obligated to pay money to the other spouse on an ongoing, periodic basis — alimony and child support.

There are differences in the intent and purpose of both of these items, as well as different factors that determine how much the payor spouse (the spouse paying the money) will pay.

The Purpose and Logic of Child Support

As the name implies, child support is money that one spouse pays to the other to pay for the living expenses necessary to care for and raise the child. The logic is that if the parents were still together, both would share the child’s daily living expenses, so that should not change just because the parties are divorcing or separating. One parent should not have a child with the other and then be able to walk away from the marriage, leaving the other to pay 100% of the child’s expenses.

It can be hard for many payor (the party paying the money) parent to reconcile that even though the child support money is for the child, the money is paid to the other parent. Additionally, as a general rule, there is no legal requirement on how child support money is used. Nobody is monitoring the funds to make sure they only go toward the child’s expenses.

The law just assumes that whatever the actual money is used for, the additional income will eventually benefit the child. This can create anger and frustration with parents paying child support, who may feel that their money is not being used for the child.

Who Pays What?

As a general rule, the parent who has the child the fewer nights will often be the parent paying child support, although income also counts as well–the more income, the more support will be paid.

However, it is possible for parents to share time-sharing 50%-50%, and while this does not eliminate the necessity to pay child support, an evenly divided time-sharing schedule can reduce the child support obligation that the payor parent must pay.

Florida has child support guidelines. That means that in most cases, you will plug in your income figures, and with a few additions and deductions that are allowed under the child support guidelines, you will have a child support figure. It is just math based on a statutory formula.

The biggest argument in child support often comes with what number goes into the formula; parents will often argue that the other parent is hiding income or artificially lowering income just to get a smaller dollar figure to put into the formula and thus, a smaller child support obligation.

Child support ends when the child turns 18 or enters college—however, special circumstances like a disability may extend child support. Additionally, unlike alimony, the court can order that child support be deducted automatically from the paying spouse’s paycheck through an income deduction order.

Alimony

Alimony is different from child support in that alimony is awarded for the benefit of the payee (receiving) spouse. The purpose of alimony is to keep a spouse in about the same lifestyle that he or she had during the marriage; it is not fair for a spouse to contribute to the marriage for many years, give up personal financial or professional opportunities, and then be left destitute after a divorce because the other spouse was the money earner in the marriage.

Unlike child support, there is no mathematical formula and no grid of numbers that tell anybody how much alimony is or will be. This means that a court has much discretion in awarding alimony and that every case may be different based on the facts. This is another area where mediation may be helpful, as you can mitigate the risk of a large alimony award being given by a judge.

Alimony Factors

Alimony is based on the need and ability to pay; the receiving spouse must show the financial need, and the paying spouse must have the ability to pay the alimony (even if it is just a small amount of alimony). Additionally, the length of the marriage will be considered. Shorter-term marriages often result in no alimony award at all, or smaller payments for shorter time periods, whereas with longer marriages, there is often a presumption that some form of alimony must be paid.

To see if alimony should be awarded and how much, the court will look at things like the standard of living of the couple during the marriage, the financial resources both spouses will have once the marriage is over, and the contributions to the marriage that a spouse made, such as raising kids helping a family business grow, taking care of the home, or other sacrifices made by one spouse, for the success of the marriage and family.

Types of Alimony

Alimony is much more flexible than child support. There are many different kinds of alimony. Some include:

  • Bridge-the-Gap – this is temporary, short-term alimony, just to help a spouse get “over the hump” of going from married to single life. This alimony can only last for two years
  • Rehabilitative – this is where a spouse can become financially self-sufficient but may need time and resources to do that. The spouse may need to wait to get job training or wait until a child gets old enough that the parent can go to work, or the spouse may need to get a degree. During that time, the paying spouse will pay rehabilitative alimony.
  • Durational – This is like rehabilitative alimony, but there is no rehabilitation plan; the alimony just lasts a specific period of time and then ceases. This support can last for no more than the number of years that the marriage lasted.
  • Permanent – Permanent alimony is usually reserved for very long marriages and situations where the receiving spouse has no reasonable expectation of being able to support him or herself. For example, a spouse may be too old to be retrained or may be ill or disabled. The receiving spouse may not ever be able to work because they need to take care of a special needs child.

Of course, you have much more control over what you pay and can try to craft a payment agreement that works better for you and your own situation by resolving the case on your own. The best way to ensure that your child support or alimony obligations, if they are necessary, are fair and reasonable is to try to come to some kind of agreement outside of court through mediation or settlement.

We can help you understand the financial aspects and obligations that you may face in your divorce and get you the best result possible.

Anthony J. Diaz is an experienced family law attorney focusing on Mediation and Collaborative Divorce. His offices are located at 2431 Aloma Ave Suite #124, Winter Park, FL. 32792 and 3720 Suntree Blvd., Suite 103G, Melbourne, FL. 32940.

You may contact Anthony Diaz by calling 407-212-7807 or by email an*****@************aw.com or visit anthonydiazlaw.com for more information.

And if you found this article helpful, please leave us a review HERE.

How to Get More Parenting Time With Your Child

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In any child custody case, the child (or children) of the marriage cannot be in two places at the same time. They either will live with one parent or the other on given nights of the week or throughout the year, and one parent will often have more of those nights than the other.

If You Have Visitation

The first thing to remember is that if you are the parent with “visitation,” which often means that you have fewer of the nights with the child, this is not a reflection on you, or your quality as a parent. There are a lot of factors that play into whether a parent is the primary time-sharing parent, or whether a parent gets visitation, and many of those factors have nothing to do with you, or your skills, quality, or worth as a parent.

The fact that you have visitation also does not affect your right to raise your child and make decisions about your child’s life. A parenting plan, custody agreement, or other document will be drafted and agreed upon between you and your spouse, which will detail what each parent has responsibilities for, and rights over, in the child’s life. The fact that you have visitation never takes away your constitutional right to make crucial decisions about your child’s upbringing, health and welfare.

Of course, despite all of this, many parents may understandably want as much visitation as possible. How does that happen? What are the factors that a judge or a court will look at now or in the future, in determining how much visitation that you will have with your child?

The Child’s Safety and Environment

Some factors are obvious and go without saying: the court will want to see that you provide a safe environment for your child, where the child’s needs are met. Understanding age-appropriate activities, keeping the child safe from exposure to drugs and alcohol or other dangers, are paramount.

That may also include your presence in the child’s life. That means that parents who work multiple jobs, or who may put their social life ahead of time with their child, may find visitation time reduced. Showing that you have the time and willingness to be an active, present and involved parent, will help show the court that you should get as much visitation as possible.

The court will want to disrupt the child’s life as little as possible. If you are out of the child’s school district, or far from the child’s friends or extra-curricular activities, that may affect the parenting time or visitation that you have with the child.

The court may look to the child’s physical environment. Does your child have his or her own room where you live? Are there activities that the child enjoys near you? Do you have family or relatives near you who are an active part in the child’s life?

The Other Parent

There are also a number of things that you can control, and things that you can do, to demonstrate that you should have as much visiting and parenting time with your child as possible.

One major thing you can do, is to have a healthy, working relationship with the child’s other parent, and that you refrain from belittling, insulting or fighting with the other parent in front of the child. Showing your child what a bad parent the other parent is, will not help you get more time with the child—it will have the opposite effect.

This does not mean that you have to be best friends with the other parent. It is OK and natural to maintain some hostility or anger towards the other parent. But that should never show up in front of the child, and the child should not be used as a “weapon” to “get back” at the other parent.

Use the Time You Have

You should also fight to have more time with your child, or if there is some kind of visitation schedule in place formally or informally with the other parent, you should exercise the visitation that you do have.

There are many parents who fight for visitation, and then when they get visitation time with the child, they proceed to miss pickup times, or they leave the child with babysitters, or just allow the other parent to have the child.

Of course, emergencies happen, and there is nothing wrong with parents working together to accommodate the other parent if schedules need to be rearranged or time needs to be missed. But the court will be hesitant to give you visitation (or more visitation), if it looks like you are not even using the time that you have with the child.

Be There for the Child

Be present in your child’s life-no matter where the child is physically located. For example, just because Thursday is mom’s night with the child, does not mean that you, as the dad, cannot go to the child’s play, or baseball game, or parent night at school. Make sure that all organizations where your child goes or attends, have both parents listed as contacts.

Track Time With the Child

If you have an informal visitation schedule, or if you do have an established schedule, but you and the other parent have deviated from it, keep track of any extra time that you are spending with the child (and any time the other parent is voluntarily passing up time with the child).

If you ever wanted to go back to court to ask a court to give you more visitation or parenting time, you will then have evidence of the time you are spending with the child, and of the time the other parent voluntarily gave up his or her time with the child.

There are things you can do to improve your chances of getting as much time with your child as possible after a divorce, or in a paternity action.

Anthony J. Diaz is an experienced family law attorney focusing on Mediation and Collaborative Divorce. His offices are located at 2431 Aloma Ave Suite #124, Winter Park, FL. 32792 and 3720 Suntree Blvd., Suite 103G, Melbourne, FL. 32940.

You may contact Anthony Diaz by calling 407-212-7807 or by email an*****@************aw.com or visit anthonydiazlaw.com for more information.

And if you found this article helpful, please leave us a review HERE.

Parental Rights and Responsibilities in Florida

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When people get divorced, they often worry that they will no longer have any parental rights if a custody battle does not turn out their way. They fear that if the other spouse ends up with the majority of time-sharing, they will be left out in the cold, unable to raise their own child or make the decisions that they should be able to make as a parent.

Time-sharing is Not Custody

The good news is that you have rights as a parent that can never be taken away from you absent you doing something truly something horrible making you patently unfit to parent, which would result in a dependency proceeding from the state—but that is entirely different than the time-sharing decisions that happen in a family law case.

No matter what schedule is decided on by you and your ex-spouse, and no matter what a judge may decide when it comes to time-sharing, your parental rights are almost never terminated. In fact, parents have a constitutional right to raise their kids and make decisions for them.

Parental Rights

Your rights as a parent will often be spelled out in a parenting plan. A parenting plan is a form put out by the Florida Supreme Court, which details what each parent will be responsible for when it comes to making decisions in the child’s life. In every custody case, whether the parties resolve amicably, or whether a result of a contested divorce and custody case, a parenting plan must be completed by the parties.

In some cases, the parent with time-sharing with the child will have the legal ability and right to make decisions for the child, when the child is with them. But other times, and for other matters, it does not matter which parent the child is physically residing with or whose house the child is physically at—the parent’s legal right to be part of their children’s lives, carries on.

For example, for extracurricular activities for the child, the law (and thus the parenting plan) may allow any parent to register the child, even without the consent of the other. However, for more major decisions, like the decision to get medical care, or participate in a given religion, consent for both parents may be necessary, regardless of where the child is physically located.

Terminating Your Rights

You may wonder whether your rights as a parent can be terminated, even if the court finds that you abuse drugs or alcohol, you have a criminal record, you received a DUI, or that there is something else in your background that you worry the court will look at, and find you unfit to parent.

Although these are all very serious things that a court will look at and consider, and although they may all affect your ability to have time with your child, rarely will they ever completely terminate your rights as a parent. Rather, when factors like these occur in a family law case, the court may order limited visitation, or supervised visitation, at least for a certain period of time. The family law/divorce court will almost never be able to just take away your rights as a parent, or your ability to meaningfully participate in your child’s life.

What About Responsibilities?

Like all things in life, your rights come with some responsibilities. But courts are often hesitant to detail responsibilities because of your constitutional right to raise your child as you see fit.

Certainly, the law requires the basic care that you would imagine a child has a right to expect from a parent. For example, the right to a safe environment, to a parent who protects the child, the right to food, the right to be educated, and the right to medical care may all be considered things that are parental responsibilities.

To see that you are or can provide these things, a court will often look at your lifestyle and see if it is one that is conducive to the child’s well-being, safety, and health. The court (and likely, your ex-spouse, in a contested custody case) may raise issues as to where you live, where the child will sleep, what your lifestyle is, any bad habits that you may have, whether you can adequately manage the child’s educational needs and whether you are able to be involved in your child’s life.

But outside of those kinds of basic requirements, your responsibilities as a parent will largely be dictated by your marital settlement agreement (or by the court, if your case does not settle). Again, Florida’s parenting plan will list basic responsibilities that both parties must follow.

For example, the law doe not require that you raise your child in an orthodox Jewish household, that you take him to football practice, or that he be fed only a vegetarian diet. These are parental decisions, up to you as a parent. However, if you and your spouse have agreed as part of a divorce agreement that any of these (or things like these) must be followed, then you do have a parental responsibility to comply with these requirements.

Getting Along With the Other Parent

One responsibility that all parents have, in every custody case, is the responsibility to get along with each other and work cooperatively, at least enough to make life easier for the child. You do not have to like your ex-spouse (although that helps), but constant fighting, belittling the other parent, or using the child as a “weapon” against the other parent will almost always be seen by the court as a violation of your basic parental responsibilities.

Abiding by Your Responsibilities

Often, parents will agree to things in mediation, or as part of a marital settlement agreement when it comes to kids, with the thought that they will eventually just ignore the requirements, and raise the child however they want, when the child is in their care or custody. However, doing so is a violation of the agreement (or the court order approving the agreement), and can land a parent in some serious trouble.

Understanding your parental rights and responsibilities can help you work toward a peaceful solution to the issues in your divorce and custody case.

Anthony J. Diaz is an experienced family law attorney focusing on Mediation and Collaborative Divorce. His offices are located at 2431 Aloma Ave Suite #124, Winter Park, FL. 32792 and 3720 Suntree Blvd., Suite 103G, Melbourne, FL. 32940.

You may contact Anthony Diaz by calling 407-212-7807 or by email an*****@************aw.com or visit anthonydiazlaw.com for more information.

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