Child Custody Changes in Florida Law

In 2008 the Florida Legislature made substantive changes to Florida Statute 61.13; some of these change were cosmetic, deleting the words ‘child custody’ and ‘visitation’ and substituting ‘time sharing plan’ for those pejorative terms that were so rightfully deemed more appropriate for inmates than children. Other changes were implemented to force the Courts to finally abandon the failed practice of the Standard Model Shared Parenting Plan that had for so long doomed our children to become hostages of the system and to relegate fathers to the role of absentee parents and paychecks. Each Circuit was to develop its own implementation of this plan.

In the First Judicial Circuit former Chief Judge Kim Skievaski (thankfully soon to be retired judge Kim Skievaski) elected to allow a committee from the Escambia Santa Rosa Bar to implement a plan for those two counties and had Judge Ketchel in Fort Walton oversee the Okaloosa-Walton Bar’s development of a plan for those two counties. The Escambia Bar came up with a reasonably open plan wherein the parents and the Court worked out equitable time sharing agreements (Click Here to View ) by filling in a monthly schedule that was agreeable to both parties. The Okaloosa Bar decided to remain with the old agreement wherein fathers receive two weekends per month of ‘time-sharing’ thereby guaranteeing continuing strife in Court over contempt stemming from child support and withheld visitation and coincidentally guaranteeing continued work for the family law attorneys. Anthony Bisordi spearheaded this effort to maintain the destructive status quo. As attorney Stanley Rosenblatt noted in his book The Divorce Racket the best way to make money as a divorce attorney is to foment strife between the parties – true 40 years ago when first written, and sadly still true today.

Without doubt there are bad fathers just as there are bad mothers, but hopefully the changes in child custody will generate a new sense of equality and demonstrate the value of both parents in raising their children.

RWI can assist you in guaranteeing that you will receive fair treatment by the Courts in your custody cases in the First Judicial Circuit with relevant investigative efforts, attorney assessment, etc.
The Escambia Santa Rosa Bar has an interesting training aid for their lawyers Click Here that is their interpretation of their own implementation.