Custody: What it means today in Florida
A growing problem in the internet age is false or outdated information. We often see new clients who come to us with
ideas about child custody that they have researched on their computers; or
worse, they have gotten advice from
family and friends. When they come to me, they are surprised to find out that “custody”
is no longer a word used in Florida Family Law.
The legislature has divided what was once known as custody
into two parts. Florida Statute 61.13
splits the old custody term into Parental
Responsibly and a Parenting Plan.
This was done because, under the old system, you had someone with primary
custody and someone with secondary custody. This created a natural tension
between the parties that greatly interfered with the parents’ primary mission: raising the child(ren) together. We are Americans;
no one wants to be second. The primary tended to think of themselves as king of
the kids, and the secondary looked at him- or herself as getting the worst of the
deal. Number two was always looking for a way to knock off number one, and
number one was frequently looking for a way to show number two their proper
place in the pecking order. In addition, number two had to pay child support to
number one; a situation that did not promote harmony. The system was changed to
eliminate the conflict between the parents brought on by the custody labels.
Parental Responsibly is
the decision-making ability that affects the child: when is bed time; what they
are allowed to eat; where they go to school; when they drive; rules about smart
phones, etc. Parental Responsibility encourages joint decisions – unless one
person is generally not doing a good job of running their own life, and the
Court decides that he/she has no business making decisions for another person.
Sometimes a court will carve out a part of the Parental Responsibility and
award it to one person if this is the case. I have clients that have sole
medical decision-making capacity because the other party was demonstrated to be
so cheap that they would not take the child to the doctor.
Parenting Plan is
defined as time-sharing with the child. The child goes back and forth between
the parents’ homes, and no one parent is the primary or the secondary. Time-sharing
can take many forms, depending on the wishes or schedules of the parties. I
often hear “I want to share 50/50.” I then ask what that means in terms of days
of the week, and they are uncertain. It can mean a week on, a week off; three
days, then four; or something entirely different. The most important part of a Parenting
Plan is to allow the child(ren) to feel at home wherever they are, and not to
shuttle them back and forth so rapidly that their lives are in a constant state
of changing environments, packing and unpacking. A Parenting Plan can be one parent having
more time than the other parent, or one parent only having minimal contact with
the child(ren), if the court finds it is in the child’s/childrens’ best
interests.
