????March 09, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- In 2008, the Florida legislature changed the way parents talked concerning how they would spend time with their child after a divorce.
Gone were references to custody, visitation and primary residence. In their place was the concept of a "parenting plan" using "time sharing," which was based on the public policy decision that it is important to have both parents involved with the raising of their children.
It is often said that after a divorce the marriage relationship is ended, however, the parties to a divorce forever remain the parents to their children, inexorably locked together. The better and more cohesively (even if separately) they can work together, the greater the benefits their children will reap from that cooperation.
Parenting Plan
The concept of the parenting plan is a move away from the mother-always-gets-custody to a more realistic plan that provides for how parents actually interact with their children. Parents have time-sharing, and the plan explicitly lays out how that will take place.
The Florida statute requires the parenting plan to specify how the parents will share their time and responsibilities for their children, including the times the child will spend with each parent, responsibility for health care and school-related matters and how the parents will communicate with the children.
Best Interests
Approval of this plan by the court is dependent on it being in the "best interests" of the child. Courts engage in a comprehensive examination of the family situation and multiple factors that affect the "welfare and interests" of the child.
20 Factors
The legislature provides 20 factors a court should examine. According to Florida law, those factors are:
- The ability of the parent to "facilitate and encourage a close and continuing parent-child relationship," maintain the time-sharing schedule and reasonableness when changes are necessary
- The division of "parental responsibilities," including which responsibilities delegated to third-parties
- The "demonstrated capacity and disposition" of the parent to place the child's needs and desires ahead of their own
- The stability of the parental environment
- The geographic viability of the plan -- the court will look at the need for travel time between parents and the child's activities, especially school
- The moral fitness of the parents
- The mental and physical health of the parents
- The record of the child at home, school and community
- The preference of the child, if the court finds the child to be of "sufficient intelligence, understanding, and experience" to be able to state his or her preference
- The parents "knowledge, capacity, and disposition" to know the "circumstances," such as friends, teachers, health care providers, daily activities, and favorite things, of the minor child
- Ability of parents to provide routine, discipline, and schedules
- Ability of the parents to communicate with each other on issues and activities pertaining to the child, and the "willingness" of the parents to present a "unified front on all major issues"
- Evidence of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or abandonment
- Whether either parent has knowingly lied or provided false information to the court about abuse, neglect or abandonment
- The "parenting tasks customarily performed by each parent" prior to litigation
- Parents' "demonstrated capacity and disposition" to participate and be involved in the child's school and extracurricular activities
- Ability of parents to provide an environment that is substance abuse free
- "Capacity and disposition" of the parents to protect the child from the current litigation
- Ability of the parents to meet the child's developmental needs
- Any other factors the court deems relevant
In developing a plan for your children, you should discuss all of the factors with your attorney to carefully provide specific evidence to support your suggested plan. A parenting plan that clearly demonstrates how it meets the needs of the child or children will have the greatest likelihood of being approved by a court.
Article provided by Brodie & Friedman, P.A.
Visit us at www.brodiefriedman.com
---
Press release service and press release distribution provided by http://www.24-7pressrelease.com
# # #
Read more Press Releases from FL Web Advantage:
the secret world of arrietty cee lo allen iverson jr smith chris anderson rondo suspended bay bridge
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.