Florida family law attorney

What the 2023 changes to Florida family law actually did

Two statutes were rewritten in 2023, and between them they changed the two questions most people care about most: how long support lasts, and how much time each parent gets. Both took effect on 1 July 2023, which means a great deal of what is still published online about Florida divorce describes a system that no longer exists.

Permanent alimony is gone. SB 1416 eliminated it for cases decided on or after that date. What remains is bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative and durational alimony, plus temporary support while the case is pending. Rehabilitative alimony is now capped at five years. Durational alimony requires a marriage of at least three years. And no award may exceed the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need or 35% of the difference between the parties’ net incomes — a hard statutory ceiling, not a guideline a judge can simply exceed.

Equal time-sharing is now the starting point. HB 1301 created a rebuttable presumption that equal time-sharing is in a child’s best interests. That is not the same as automatic 50/50 — a parent who disagrees can still rebut it — but the burden has moved. Before the change, a parent seeking equal time often had to build a case for it. Now a parent seeking anything other than equal time has to prove, by the greater weight of the evidence, that equal time would not serve the child.

The practical effect is that advice from before mid-2023, from a friend who divorced in 2019 or an article written in 2021, can be confidently and completely wrong. It is worth saying so plainly, because people make decisions on that advice before they ever speak to a lawyer.

How a Florida divorce actually begins

One spouse must have lived in Florida for six months before the petition is filed. That is jurisdictional under § 61.021 — without it the court cannot hear the case at all, and the residence has to be proved, usually by a driver license, a voter registration or the testimony of a corroborating witness.

Florida is a no-fault state. Under § 61.052 the court needs a finding that the marriage is irretrievably broken. It does not need to hear who was unfaithful, who left, or whose fault it was. That surprises people, and it disappoints some of them — but the law is not interested in assigning blame for the end of a marriage, and bringing that fight into a case usually costs money without changing the result.

The petition is filed, the other spouse is served and has twenty days to respond, and both sides must then exchange financial documents under the mandatory disclosure rule — tax returns, pay records, account statements, debts — whether or not the other side asks for them. Incomplete disclosure is the single most common reason a simple case stops being simple.

Where there are minor children, both parents must also complete an approved parenting course before a final judgment is entered. It is a statutory requirement under § 61.21, not a formality a judge can waive because the parties get along.

Most Florida family cases go to mediation before a judge decides anything contested. Many resolve there.

How Florida calculates child support

Child support in Florida is a formula, not a negotiation. Section 61.30 sets a guideline amount built from both parents’ net incomes, the number of overnights each parent has with the child, and the cost of health insurance and work-related childcare. A court can depart from the guideline figure, but it has to make written findings explaining why.

Because overnights feed the formula directly, the time-sharing schedule and the support number are not separate questions. They move together, and an agreement that settles one without looking at the other usually produces a surprise.

Net income is not take-home pay as people usually mean it. The statute defines what comes out of gross income to reach it, and a parent who is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed can have income imputed — the court calculates support on what they could earn rather than what they chose to earn.

Support is usually paid through the State Disbursement Unit rather than directly between parents, which creates a payment record neither side has to keep. That record matters later, in any dispute about arrears.

What alimony looks like in Florida after the 2023 reform

There are four kinds now, and permanent is not one of them.

Temporary support covers the period while the case is pending, and ends when the final judgment is entered. Bridge-the-gap helps with identifiable short-term needs in the transition from married to single life; it cannot exceed two years and cannot be modified. Rehabilitative alimony funds a specific, written plan to acquire education, training or credentials, and since 2023 it is capped at five years. Durational alimony provides support for a set period after a marriage of at least three years, with the length tied to the length of the marriage.

Whatever the type, the award cannot exceed the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need or 35% of the difference between the parties’ net incomes. That ceiling is the most consequential part of the 2023 statute and it is frequently missed, because most of the material written about Florida alimony predates it.

The court first decides whether one spouse has an actual need and the other has the ability to pay. Only then does it reach the type and the amount, weighing the length of the marriage, the standard of living, each party’s age and health, their contributions including as a homemaker, and their earning capacity.

Premarital and postnuptial agreements in Florida

A premarital agreement decides in advance what would otherwise be decided by a judge — how property is classified, what happens to a business or an inheritance, and whether alimony is waived or limited. A postnuptial agreement does the same thing after the marriage has begun.

Florida enforces these agreements, but they are set aside often enough that the execution matters as much as the drafting. The usual grounds are that the agreement was not entered voluntarily, or that there was no fair and reasonable disclosure of assets and income before signing. An agreement produced a week before the wedding, with no disclosure and no time to take advice, is the fact pattern that gets challenged.

Child support cannot be bargained away by agreement. It belongs to the child, not to the parents, and a court is not bound by what the parents agreed about it.

Establishing paternity, and what follows from it

Where the parents were not married, an unmarried father in Florida has no automatic right to time-sharing until paternity and a parenting plan are established. Being named on the birth certificate, paying support, or living with the child does not by itself create enforceable rights to see the child.

Chapter 742 sets out how parentage is determined — by agreement and acknowledgment, by administrative order, or by a court action that can include genetic testing. Once established, the same framework applies as in any other case: a parenting plan, a time-sharing schedule and guideline child support.

It runs both ways. A mother seeking support needs paternity established first, and a father seeking time with his child needs it just as much.

Changing a Florida order after the judgment

A final judgment is not permanent, but it is not easily changed either. Modifying support or time-sharing requires a substantial, material and unanticipated change in circumstances since the last order — not simply a change of mind, and not a circumstance that was already foreseeable when the judgment was entered.

Job loss, a significant change in either parent’s income, a child’s changed needs, a parent’s relocation, and since 2023 a move within 50 miles of the child’s primary residence, are the situations that most often qualify.

The most expensive mistake in this area is self-help. Stopping payments because time-sharing is being denied, or withholding a child because support has not been paid, does not change the order — it creates an enforcement case against the person who did it. The order stays in force until a court changes it, and the time to move is when the circumstances change, not months later.

How mediation works in a Florida family case

Florida requires mediation in most contested family matters before a judge will decide them. It is not an optional step a determined party can skip, and it resolves a large share of cases — including many where both people arrived certain it would not.

A mediator does not decide anything and does not represent either side. The job is to find the agreement that exists between two positions, and mediators in family matters are often experienced family lawyers or retired judges who can tell both parties, candidly, what a court is likely to do with the case in front of them. That assessment is frequently the thing that moves it.

What is said in mediation is confidential and cannot be used later in the case. That is what allows both sides to put an offer on the table without it becoming evidence if the offer is refused.

Where it works, the parties sign an agreement that day and it becomes the basis of the judgment. Where it does not, the case proceeds — but the issues have usually narrowed, and narrowing is worth something even when it does not settle.

The preparation is what determines the outcome. Walking into mediation without complete financial disclosure, or without having thought through what a realistic schedule looks like week by week, wastes the day. Walking in with both costs a fraction of a trial.

Which courthouse hears a family case in Miami-Dade or Hillsborough

In Miami-Dade, family cases are heard at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center, 175 NW 1st Avenue in Miami — the family division of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, which also handles domestic violence matters. The Sunset Drive office is a short drive from it, and the Homestead office on Krome Avenue serves the south of the county.

In Hillsborough, family matters are heard through the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in downtown Tampa, a few minutes from the Habana Avenue office.

Where a case is filed depends on residence rather than on where the marriage took place or where the parties married. Most of a family case happens outside a courtroom in any event — in disclosure, in negotiation and at mediation — and the cases that do reach a judge are usually the ones where those steps were skipped.