The term custody is no longer used in Florida. You won’t hear anything about the primary residence either.
When going through a divorce, child custody may be your most pressing concern. When both parents want to remain involved in their children’s lives, custody can become an ugly battle that is not in your children’s best interests. And you will hear a lot about the welfare of your children. Many divorcing parents want to know if Florida is a 50/50 state or if the local law favors the mother. None of these things play a role in the Sunshine State’s child custody laws. The only thing included and the only thing a family judge needs to consider is what is in the best interests of the children. You have two choices here – let the judge decide what’s best for your children, or work out a custody plan with your (former) spouse. The best way to do this is to sit down with some experienced Fort Lauderdale child custody attorneys and come up with a plan.
Who gets custody of the children?
The term custody is no longer used in Florida. You won’t hear anything about the primary residence either. Florida law was changed to refer to custody arrangements as “time-sharing” with the children. However, the problems remain the same.
Basically, Florida judges will look for an agreement that allows both parents to remain involved in the children’s lives, as having a meaningful relationship with both a mother and father is in a child’s best interests.
If at all possible, the judge will propose shared physical custody, or what they now refer to as “equal timeshare.” This means that the children would spend about the same amount of time with both parents. The other option is sole custody or “majority time-sharing.”
Instead of letting the judge decide, the parents can agree on custody. What you need to consider is finding a way to keep your children’s lives from being disrupted by going back and forth between their parents’ homes. If the parents live close by and the children would have easy access to school, a doctor, or extracurricular activities, joint custody would be a good option. An experienced Fort Lauderdale custody attorney can help you create a viable joint custody plan that you can then submit to the judge for approval.
Another thing to decide is legal custody. This has nothing to do with where the child lives. It’s about who gets the right to make important decisions for the children — like the school they go to, medical decisions, special needs issues, basically anything that requires parental involvement.
Functional electrical simulation device improves gait in children with cerebral palsy; Image by NIH Image Gallery, via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.
Knowledgeable custody attorneys in Fort Lauderdale typically recommend joint custody, and the judge would also favor such an option. This allows both parents to have a say in their children’s lives, and it also gives the children the feeling that both parents are looking out for them. However, joint custody is only possible if the parents can work together as a team, which is not always possible after a bitter divorce.
Does the child have a say in a custody agreement in Fort Lauderdale?
Under Florida law, there is no specific age at which the court must consider the child’s preference. A child under the age of 18 cannot, in the strictest sense of the law, choose which parent to live with. However, most judges will hear a child over the age of 12 or 13, even younger if the child is mature enough to express such a desire. However, the judge is not obliged to grant the child’s express wish.
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