Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Child Custody

Because supervised visits in Florida child custody cases usually severely restrict a parent’s access to a child, the law requires that certain provisions be included in an order which includes this type of visitation. The case T.D. v. K.F.., 2D18-4291 (Fla. 2d DCA November 8, 2019) goes over these provisions.

The parties were never married and separated a short time after the birth of their child. At the time of the parties’ separation, the mother moved to a different county with the parties’ child, prompting the father to file a petition to establish paternity and a Florida parenting plan. A final judgment was entered which set out timesharing for both parents. Subsequently, the Department of Children and Families opened a dependency case against the mother based on her alleged drug use and inappropriate sexual activity in the presence of the child. The father then filed a petition for modification of the parties’ original parenting plan, citing the dependency case as a basis.

Ultimately, the trial court entered a final judgment modifying the parties’ parenting plan to only allow the mother supervised visits in the county in which the father resided. The order did not specify how or when the mother could regain unsupervised timesharing. The mother appealed, arguing it was error for the court to fail to give her clear path toward unsupervised timesharing. The appellate court agreed with the mother and reversed, holding “Because the trial court imposed new restrictions on the Mother's time-sharing, it was required to identify the steps the Mother must take to be able to return to having time-sharing with her child in Orange County. The trial court's failure to do so constitutes reversible error on the face of the judgment.”

The court went on to comment: “Hence, there are no hard and fast rules for what steps the trial court must order in any given case. Instead, the trial court must attempt to balance the ‘longstanding and fundamental liberty interest of parents in determining the care and upbringing of their children free from the heavy hand of government paternalism,’ against the best interests of the child, see § 61.13(2)(c), Fla. Stat. (2018) (providing that the best interests of the child are paramount when considering time-sharing and parental responsibility). To maintain this balance when the trial court has modified one parent's time-sharing to be more restrictive than it previously was, the court must not only identify the specific steps the parent must take to regain the prior time-sharing but it must also ensure that those steps are designed to address and correct the specific deficiencies that led to the modification. See Curiale, 220 So. 3d at 555 ("The steps necessary to reestablish time-sharing will be different in each case because they should be designed to assist the parent in remedying the problems that led to the parent losing time-sharing in the first place.")" (internal citations omitted).

Safeguarding your parental rights and your access to your child are paramount in a Florida child custody case. Schedule a consultation with a Miami child custody lawyer to determine the best plan for your case in moving forward.