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Parental Responsibility, Modifications and Paternity
Key Highlights Fathers need to establish paternity. This helps them have legal rights and responsibilities for their kids. In Florida, paternity can be established by choice or through court-ordered testing. Once paternity is confirmed, fathers are required to provide financial support for their children. Child custody and time-...
Time marches on, and so do people. No matter how much a person would like to look into the future and find out what will happen, this just isn’t possible. When a parenting plan is drawn up both parties do so with the limited knowledge of what will happen in the future and how each thinks the requirements of shared parenting, including times...
Holidays are, for most families, some of the best times of the year. This is especially true for young children unless their family is extremely poor, so they feel left out when compared to other children. Children and grownups alike look forward to spending time together, and as in the case of birthdays and December holidays look forward to ...
Parents love their children equally, and there is no presumption in favor of the mother or father. These words are the premise on which Florida Family courts build their statutes regarding the care and nurturing of minor children following a dissolution of marriage (divorce) or separation of parents not married. What this statement means is t...
Sometimes the issue of deciding the biological and or legal paternity of a child is best done through the courts and thus letting a judge make the final decision. In Part one of this blog, the out-of-court ways to establish who the real and or legal father of a child are discussed. This part will tell you about using the Family Courts for a p...
Definition of “paternity” as found in Merriam-Webster dictionary, “the quality or state of being a father”. In other words, the man who fathers a child is considered to have the paternity of that child. While this may seem obvious to a man who thinks he is the father of a child, there can sometimes be a situation when his paternity or...
For many years the custody of minor children following a divorce or separation of unmarried parents was ordered by appointing one parent as the primary custodial parent and the other as a secondary custodial parent or a parent with visiting rights but not necessarily the right to have their child spend an entire night. As time has gone on and...
Managing stress and anxiety during a family law case can become a serious issue. Depending on the type of case will, to a certain extent, determine the level of stress and anxiety and the manner in which they are handled. If minor children are involved the level of concern is higher and the need for careful planning for managing stress and an...
Divorce, for many, is a financially devasting experience. All financial information from past to present including bank statements, credit card charges, business dealings, property ownership, asset, and debt accumulation, trip and vacation expenses, incomes, and expenses must be out in the open for both sides to see. Ideally, a couple will be...
Filing, answer, discovery, mediation, depositions, trial, and more. It is strange to think of divorce as having milestones as these are usually associated with the life of a marriage or the growth of a child. A comprehensive definition of a milestone as it refers to divorce is provided by the Cambridge English Dictionary which defines “m...
The use of social media, which includes texting, e-mails, YouTube, Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter, Tumbler, comments, Snapchat, Instant Messenger, flicks, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn, has become almost the main way people communicate not only information but often explicit pictures and videos of how they live their lives. While this can...
Who gets the dog, or any other treasured pet, when there is to be a divorce? One would think that, since most pets are treated as a part of the family, the courts would also consider them as such. This would mean that visitation rights or timesharing rights, as time spent with minor children is now referred to, would be granted by the courts ...
With more and more states allowing evidence found on electronic devices such as computers and iPhones it is essential that persons needing such evidence to support their claims learn how to preserve evidence stored on their electronic devices. Of course, there is the other side of the coin where when someone does not want evidence found on th...
Divorce, or dissolution of marriage as it is termed in most states, has, with little exception, been on the rise since the early 1900s when the divorce rate was around 5%. Back then, women had few rights and were usually not in a position to support themselves should they seek a divorce. Men were even allowed to abuse their wives as in the ey...
PEACE (parenting plan, equitable distribution, alimony, child support, everything else like attorney fees) As with most official situations involving a series of issues, when it comes to dissolution of marriage (divorce) the court will have an order to determine the outcome of resolutions in question. In Florida, there is an acronym, PEACE...
“How do I choose a lawyer?” Is a question many people ask at some time in their life. It seems today that “going to court” for one reason or another is an everyday happening for a myriad of issues. In the United States crime rates are high, divorce rates hover near 50% and suing someone,or some organization has become the way to right...
In many states, including Florida, whenever the court is needed to determine the outcome of a minor child where both parents will be involved in shared parenting a parenting plan is required. This is true for parents who have never married or even lived together as well as for parents who have married and are divorcing.A parenting plan will i...
Divorce, or dissolution of marriage as it is now called in most states, is sometimes even harder on children that it is on the adults. Especially minor children are affected as they have no say in what will happen to their future life and in fact, will be made to go along with the final judgment signed by a judge. Not only will they, in many ...
Does marriage counseling work? To be blunt, sometimes “yes” and sometimes “no.” What are some of the considerations that are more likely to lead to success rather than failure? The following are food for thought: Probably first and foremost, for success of any kind, both parties must recognize the need for marriage counseling and...
Divorce, now termed dissolution of marriage in most states, including Florida, is not something to be taken lightly. However, there are times, for a variety of reasons one or both parties of a marriage determine their marriage is no longer working, it is, as a judge would say, irrevocably broken. Now what? First, if both parties have come ...
There are sometimes, during the hearing of a case before a judge, when it necessary to use an expert witness. According to The Legal Dictionary.com. an “expert witness is a person who is a specialist in a subject, often technical, who may present his/her expert opinion without having been witness to any occurrence relating to the lawsuit or...
To begin with, what or who is Daubert? And what is an expert witness and why should he or she need to be qualified? As Daubert deals directly with the qualification of an expert witness asked to give testimony, this blog will start with a legal definition of “expert witness.” According to Legal Dictionary|Law.com, an “expert witness ...
Everyone wants their court case to be finished with the judge’s ruling finalized as soon as possible. Quickly is unheard of in the legal world but in many instances there are causes for delays which of course add time to arriving at the final judgment. Here are some of the most frequent reasons for a delay: In most jurisdictions courts...
There is no definitive answer to“How long does a divorce take.”A number of factors enter into the amount of time it takes to process a divorce. These factors include: Will the divorce be contested or non-contested? If both parties agree on all issues including alimony and marital asset and debt division (Florida is an equitable distr...
Social media is quickly becoming the primary way to communicate information, ideas, and often pictures to support the written word. Authors Marisa A. Tradatti and Anna C. Hore note, “There’s a whole generation of people for whom tweeting is as natural as breathing, for whom the word ‘friend’ has become a verb, and for whom Web 2.0 is ...
No, being separated is not a requirement for a divorce in the state of Florida. In fact, in Florida, as in five other states, Texas, Mississippi, Deleware, Pennsylvania, and Georgia,legal separation is not recognized.A couple can choose to live apart, in other words, “separate” but the Florida courts do not have a way to make this legal. ...
You have done your research, met with some attorneys specializing in handling situations involving your concerns, chosen the attorney you felt the most comfortable with and had confidence in, and your particular case is well on its way to being decided. Without intending there to be problems with your attorney, several issues have surfaced an...
In states like Florida, unless there are special circumstances, there is no longer a primary custody parent for minor children between ages new-born to 18years but rather a sharing of parental responsibility. This is termed “parental time-sharing.”Basically,this means parents will share equally the care and nurturing of any minor children...
Florida Family Law is Concerned With the Moral Fitness of a Minor Child’s Parents One could ask what business does the law have in determining what goes on in the private lives of a minor child’s parents. Florida Family Law says there are many areas of a parent’s private life that will directly affect the care and nurturing of childr...
Disestablishment of paternity essentially means that a male who has been adjudicated to pay child support for a child thought to be fathered by him, has proof that he is, in fact, not the biological father of said child and desires the court to eliminate him (disestablish) as the father (paternity). Quite naturally the alleged father does not...
