Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Child Custody
What is a pick-up order in a Florida child custody case? This type of order is usually entered after a parent shows that the other parent or another person wrongfully has physical custody of a child. The order allows law enforcement authorities to pick-up the child and deliver the child to the parent who was granted the pick-up order. This was an issue in the case Hodge v. Babcock, 3D22-0167 (Fla. 3d DCA February 16, 2022).
In 2017, the father filed a petition to determine paternity in Florida. In response, the mother took the child to Pennsylvania and hid hers and the child’s whereabouts. The court in Florida entered an order adjudicating paternity and reserving on timesharing. After about 4 years, the father located his son and filed an emergency motion for pick-up order. This motion was granted and the father was able to retrieve his son from Pennsylvania. After the father learned the mother was en route to Florida to take their son back, he filed an emergency motion to stop the mother from doing so. The father’s motion was set for hearing and when he appeared at the hearing, he was told it was the court’s non-evidentiary motion calendar. At this hearing, the court on its own ordered the child to be returned to the mother in Pennsylvania after expressing frustration that no time-sharing order had been entered. The father appealed.
The appellate court ruled the father’s due process rights were violated by the court’s action. It held “After retrieving the child pursuant to the trial court’s pickup order, the Father had temporary custody of his son by virtue of the pickup order. The Father then sought a temporary injunction to stop the Mother’s threatened removal of the child to Pennsylvania again, and that injunction motion was set for hearing on January 26th. The Father had not been provided any prior notice that, at the January 26th hearing, the trial court would temporarily change the child’s custody. [. . .] To modify temporary custody, ‘the trial court was required to conduct an evidentiary hearing preceded by appropriate notice.’ Foreman v. James, 305 So. 3d 656, 656 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020). The trial court was also required to give the Father a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Munoz v. Salgado, 253 So. 3d 87, 88 (Fla. 3d DCA 2018).”
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