Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Child Custody

In most cases, a parent may not relocate more than 50 miles from his or her current residence with the parties’ minor child without the written permission of the other parent or a court order. How does this provision affect active duty military service members who may have to relocate frequently due to military orders? This was an issue in the case Amiot v. Olmstead, 1D20-680 (Fla. 1st DCA May 11, 2021) in which the primary focus was on the trial court’s award of prospective time-sharing to the mother, an active duty servicemember, if she moved back to Florida.

The mother filed a petition for relocation after receiving military orders to transfer to California. After a trial, the court denied the petition, but modified time-sharing so that the parties would have equal time-sharing during the child’s preschool years and once the child entered the first grade, the father would have majority time-sharing. The trial court further ordered that if the mother moved back to Florida, the parties would resume their equal time-sharing arrangement. The father appealed, arguing this was an improper, prospective modification of child support.

The appellate court agreed with the father on this point, holding “The trial court’s conditional award of timesharing based on the mother’s potential relocation in the future was not a presentbased determination of the child’s best interests. More importantly, the court’s prospective award of timesharing contravenes the statutory requirement for a parent to file a relocation petition when relocating her principal place of residence to a new residence more than fifty miles away from the old residence. We thus reverse the trial court’s order and remand with instructions to strike the conditional provision from its order.” The father also took issue with the court’s child support determination, but because the father failed to provide a transcript of the proceedings, the appellate court ruled it was without the ability to review the trial court’s determination in this regard. The child support ruling was therefore affirmed.

Schedule a consultation with a Miami child custody lawyer to determine how the law may apply to the facts of your case.