Florida Divorce * Child Custody * Domestic Violence Law Lawyer | Boca Raton

Woman marries immigrant. They have two children together.

Mother and Father divorce in Connecticut, where the family lived throughout the marriage. Mother is awarded sole custody of children by Connecticut court.

Father moves back to native Lebanon. Mother sends boys there for summer visitation with Father.

Seven months go by… Boys reportedly remain in Lebanon with Father. According to Mother, she has been allowed to speak to them only twice.

According to the article in the Lebanon Daily Star, in Lebanon, the father always wins custody – of boys once they are over 7 years of age.

Lebanon is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. And there is no extradition treaty between the US and Lebanon.

So it is irrelevant that Father is wanted on kidnaping charges in the US. According to the article, the US government can do nothing for the Mother or the children.

This happens all too often. Yet too many divorcing and divorced parents do not appreciate this danger, even in high-risk circumstances, as above – until it’s just too late.

Don’t be one of them.

Why do people who perpetrate domestic violence do it?

Power and control.

So reports the Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, following two recent area murders stemming from domestic violence.

The article underscores that the attitude of abusers often carries over to their children, placing them at risk as well.

This reminder is timely, as we look ahead to Child Abuse Prevention Month in April and awareness-raising events such as Hands Around the Courthouse in Canton, Illinois.

Generally when children are swept into the foster care system, authorities place them with relatives – if suitable relatives are willing and able to take them in.

A recent USA Today article reports that relatives are increasingly going much further, adopting these children as well.

This, of course, benefits foster children, especially displaced siblings and older children who are more difficult to place with strangers.

The article also highlights the various emotional challenges unique to adopting a related child out of foster care. For example:

“an Iowa grandmother … says she felt pressure to adopt her grandson but didn’t want his mom becoming his sister.”

The Utica (NY) Observer-Dispatcher recently ran an interesting article, New Court Combines Domestic Cases. In upstate NY, the article reports, they have been introducing Integrated Domestic Violence Court.

What’s that? In a nutshell, if family members appear in domestic violence court, any subsequent family legal matters (such as divorce, crimes between family members, custody and visitation issues, etc.) will be heard in that same courtroom, before that same judge.

Here in Florida, we have been gradually implementing throughout our state a variation on that theme. In Florida, we call itUnified Family Court. Under this new paradigm, all family type cases are now heard in a Unified Family Court by the same judge.

Although demanding of our judges and our court clerks, this new court model finally enables and empowers the courts to do what family lawyers have always done: (directly or indirectly) serve the family as a whole.

As part of this transformation of the family court system in Florida, Unified Family Court judges are reportedly receiving more comprehensive training in allied legal disciplines than previously. With a thus specially-trained presiding judge observing the entire family dynamic firsthand, he or she will be in far better position to rule holistically on all family-related legal issues.

As a bonus, the legal process should also be less disruptive and more beneficial for families.

The Quad City (Davenport, IA) Times publishes an article whose theme is that incompatibilities in a couple’s money management styles are significant contributors to divorce.

There’s a lot of truth to that.

The article gives some tips to foster better financial communications and develop a common strategy – to make the marriage last.

But, if things don’t work out anyway, following the same advice can make a divorce go more smoothly and amicably too.

The Sunshine State has expansive Sunshine Laws, the popular name for legislation making records public. They reflect a strong public policy.

The internet has taken implementation of Sunshine Laws here in Florida and elsewhere to a new plane – a plane, some argue, that aids identity thieves and invades ordinary people’s privacy and, in some cases, makes them targets of violence and manipulation.

The issue is quite controversial and is fueling heated debate. As well it should.

A lot of the discussion really hinges on context. What type of information? Who is the custodian of the information?

The articles below represent a sampling of viewpoints and state laws and policies:

• South Florida Sun Sentinel
• Miami Herald
• Orlando Sentinel
• Denver Post
• Asheville Citizen Times
• Glen Falls (NY)Post Starand
• Asbury Park (NJ) Press

Normally, a child custody dispute, whether local or international, is between two parents. Sometimes, it is between a parent and another relative (or guardian, or someone who has, in fact, been acting like a parent).

Now, a ten year old boy in South Africa is reportedly asking a South African court to recognize his legal standing to assert his wishes to remain in South Africa with his father, despite his mother’s application in the UK to have him returned to her custody in England, under international law codified in the Hague Convention.

The University of Pretoria’s Centre for Child Law is seeking permission to advise the court, as experts on the Hague Convention, as amicus curiae. The Centre will reportedly argue that the Hague Convention, as interpreted in cases, has increasingly upheld children’s rights over their parent’s rights.

The Hague Convention expressly allows as one possible defense the child’s objection to returning. But the court may also consider the age and maturity of the child expressing an objection.

According to the articles below, the boy only lived in England for one year. He reportedly stated in an affidavit for the South African court that he wasn’t happy in school there because the other children were rude and teased him.

The boy’s sister remains with their mother in England.

It is important to remember that the sole question to be decided in Hague Convention cases is jurisdiction: which nation will have the right to decide, in a second case, on the merits, which parent will ultimately get custody of the child.

Read more in The Mercury and The Star.

A domestic violence case is reportedly set for oral argument next month before the US Supreme Court.

The female defendant in a Dallas criminal case allegedly illegally purchased seven guns for her boyfriend, out of fear that he would kill her and her two daughters if she didn’t help him. The woman was convicted of lying in her application for the guns, because she, in effect, denied that she was under indictment for (but not convicted of) a non-violent crime.

The woman appealed, among other things, the trial court’s exclusion of expert testimony on battered woman’s syndrome as part of her defense. The Supreme Court will not hear that argument though.

In our legal system, the state must prove a criminal defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But guilty of what? Every element required to meet the legal definition of the crime charged.

Based on that, the issue before the Supreme Court will actually be a narrow legal issue:

1. Is lack of duress an element of the crime charged which the state must prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) as part of its case or
2. Is duress merely a defense that the defendant must show as part of its defense to the charge?

The former standard, of course, makes it tougher for the state to convict. The Bush Administration reportedly urged the Supreme Court not to take this case and issue on.

Read more at The Family Violence Prevention Fund.

What happens to a spouse’s inheritance if there’s a divorce? That question comes up a lot.

And Smart Money tackles it in Hands Off My Inheritance.

The article’s analysis is generally consistent with Florida law. It is worth repeating that, to maintain an inheritance as separate property, inheriting spouses should take care with how they hold and use their inheritances.

Also, it’s important to understand that an inheritance, although not divided, is not ignored or irrelevant in the divorce. On the contrary, an inheritance may be taken into account in how other, marital property is divided – and in whether or how much spousal support there should be.

As too many custodial parents know, dedicated non-payors of support have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. In recent years, technology has inadvertently provided a new one.

In a relatively short time, the cell phone has become ubiquitous – and more. Not only does just about everybody seem to have one.

These days, some people have only a cell phone. In some cases, that just suits people’s perfectly legitimate, very mobile lifestyles.

In other cases, dropping their landline has liberated people, enabling them “to fly under the radar”, without listings of their phone or address in telephone directories.

This, in turn, has made it harder for custodial parents and support enforcement agencies to keep track of non-compliant, non-custodial parents who are legally obligated to pay child support.

The state of Maine is considering fighting back – with proposed legislation that would require cellular telephone companies to disclose billing addresses of account holders who owe child support.

Of course, the proposal has its dark side, which privacy advocates have been quick to point out.

You can read more about it in The Morning Sentinel and The Portland Press Herald.

Couple in Shootings Were in Divorce Case, an article from The [River Bend] Telegraph, illustrates some commonly held misconceptions about domestic violence – misconceptions that cost lives.

A man reportedly murdered his wife and then attempted suicide, days before a divorce hearing to determine whether the husband must move out of the couple’s home during their divorce.

After being dispatched to their home, the police allegedly looked around the outside of the house, then contacted the phone company about calling the couple, then waited around for a realtor to give them easy access to the quiet, darkened home, and then methodically searched the house – until a gunshot rang out.

Police accounts emphasized that the relatives who called police only asked them to check on the couple and did not explicitly warn them of the potential for domestic violence. And that the wife had never called the police for assistance with domestic violence.

As it happens, according to the article, the husband was previously convicted of manslaughter and some misdemeanors – but not of a crime of domestic violence.

Police found the wife dead – lying on top of the phone, as though she had been trying to call for help.

The wife’s divorce petition cited “extreme mental cruelty” by the husband.

The only positive thing that can come out of such tragic incidents should be increased education and training for police officers.

Their consciousness should be raised to the fact that domestic violence victims frequently don’t report real, actual incidents of domestic violence, out of fear, fear of their assailant – and fear that the police will make light of their situation or, worse, side with the assailant.

Their consciousness should also be raised to the fact that lack of previous domestic violence complaints does not preclude a very real and present danger.

If police were to receive more domestic violence training, maybe more lives could be saved – even where there is no police record of allegations of domestic violence.

Even if you don’t love pets, you may still want to support the humane society.

According to Omaha’s KETV, the humane society may aid many neglected children as well as animals.

Apparently, the same people who neglect their pets may very well neglect their children.

The humane society’s cooperation and coordination with child protective services effectively expands the force of people looking out for our children.

Who’d have guessed it?

The Libertarian Party’s candidate for North Dakota’s governor in 2004 has authored an unusual divorce initiative which he hopes will land on the state’s voters’ ballots later this year.

The initiative would:

• require all marrying couples to enter prenuptial agreements
• dramatically reduce child support payment obligations
• eliminate penalties for non-payment of child support
• assign a court-appointed attorney to respondents against whom a civil order of protection or restraining order (called an injunction for protection against domestic violence in Florida) is sought and
• protect the child visitation privileges of parties who have orders of protection entered against them

Anyone who wants to learn more about this unusual initiative can read the Grand Forks Herald article.

In Daytona Beach, FL, a custody battle has been raging over who gets to legally adopt a 4 year old boy: his foster parents or his biological second cousins.

The latest volley, reported in the Daytona Beach News Journal, was served by the foster parents, who petitioned to cancel further hearings since the court recently ordered the boy returned to them.

According to the Daytona Beach News, the appellate court held that the trial court, which placed the boy with his biological relatives, had committed legal error when it removed the child from his foster parents without adequate investigation and fact-finding regarding the child’s best interests.

This case is especially sad because this little boy’s home has been up in the air for fully half of this 4 year old’s life.

The case has been chronicled in a special section of the Daytona Beach News Journal.

The [Myrtle Beach SC] Sun News recently reported on the deaths of three different victims of domestic violence within five days on the same street in a relatively small community.

There is unquestionably rising awareness and increasing media coverage of domestic violence.

But is it enough?

Not surprisingly, many parents who allegedly default in their child support obligations don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to defend them at enforcement and / or civil contempt proceedings.

So, like it or not, they often defend themselves at these hearings on a pro se basis, a lawyer’s term for representing yourself.

According to a New Jersey Star Ledger article, when the circumstances are severe enough to warrant criminal contempt proceedings, the allegedly delinquent parent should get a bonus: free legal representation from a court-appointed attorney.

Ironically, this reported holding may have an unintended and counter-intuitive impact: custodial parents may now favor the civil remedy and non-custodial parents may now actually favor the criminal remedy.

An organization known as The National Center for Men has reportedly filed a questionable federal court lawsuit on behalf of a baby’s admitted biological father.

The theory behind the suit seems to be that: men are denied equal protection of the law, because the biological mother’s reproductive rights supersede the biological father’s reproductive rights.

Therefore, the organization’s argument apparently goes, it is unconstitutional to impose child support obligations on a father – unless the father wanted, planned or later accepted the child.

The reported facts of the case indicate that the father alleges that the mother told the father she was unable to conceive. The article did not indicate whether the mother knew the truth.

Interestingly, it does not appear from the article whether the father asserted the mother’s alleged fraud as a defense in the state court paternity case that imposed the child support obligation.

Arguably, doing so may have quietly put an end to this particular father’s cause.

On January 6th, a 14 year old boy died in a Panama City boot camp to which he was reportedly committed by Florida’s juvenile justice system.

According to reports of a second autopsy performed after the boy’s body was exhumed, the cause of the boy’s death may not be natural causes as initially determined.

A recently released videotape reportedly depicts several camp guards beating the boy to the ground, while a woman reported to be a school nurse stands by without apparent reaction.

That particular boot camp is now closed.

This week is Juvenile Justice Week.

Sources: Reuters, CNN, Wilmington Journal

Some readers may have noticed that we recently added the option of subscribing to e-mail alerts of new posts via the FEEDBLITZ service.

Please note that we plan to move all subscribers to our current e-mail notifications list to FEEDBLITZ this weekend.

Thanks in advance for your patience with any temporary glitches that may occur.

If any problems persist, please alert our webmaster.

The year was 1987.

She asked for $1 million as her share of the property division. He refused.

Early on the day of the hearing on whether to set aside their postnuptial agreement, she was murdered by a professional killer.

Law enforcement favored him as the suspect most likely behind it.

Now, a former local Palm Beach resident is standing trial in Georgia for the murder of his wife.

In this unusual case, the wife’s former divorce attorney is a key prosecution witness.

If convicted, the husband may face the death penalty.

You can read more about this case in the Palm Daily News or on CourtTV.com.

Just don’t model own divorce after it.

It often starts with routine visitation that begins – routinely. Only the non-custodial parent doesn’t return the child(ren) on time – or late.

And that’s how it happened when an Illinois law enforcement officer and father allegedly abducted his two daughters to a religious colony in the nation of Belize.

Thanks to the unsolved kidnapping catching the interest of TV’s Dr. Phil, the girls are now back home with their custodial mother, according to an article in the East Central Illinois News-Gazette.

The father is reportedly now under a no-contact order and faces criminal charges.

One can’t help but wonder how the many cases that don’t attract such media attention turn out.

It’s no surpise that a divorce can have an enormous impact on a small business owned by one or both of the spouses. But, under the right circumstances, a divorce of a key corporate player has the potential to exert an enormous impact even on a publicly-owned corporation.

Consider the pending divorce of Stephen Pomeroy, the recently designated CEO of Pomeroy IT Solutions, a company currently listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. According to a Cincinnati Post article, Jennifer Pomeroy, his wife, recently filed at least three related lawsuits in addition to her divorce action.

At least one of her lawsuits reportedly strikes at the very heart of corporate operations, alleging serious misconduct by key personnel. And the company reportedly may face being dropped from NASDAQ.

At least one other of her lawsuits reportedly raises very serious questions about her husband’s alleged propensity for violence.

One of the interesting sidenotes of the article is that the Pomeroys reportedly made a prenuptial agreement.

Most people think of prenups as ways to control property that they acquire either before or during the marriage in the event of death or divorce. Or to avoid or limit alimony in the event of divorce.

But there’s another important, although less obvious, reason for prenups that is implicit: the hope of avoiding wide-ranging litigation that may affect a spouse’s reputation and business, whether directly or indirectly.

Sometimes, the best-laid plans go awry …

One way the anticipated custodial spouse can probably save an ailing marriage (where there are minor children) is simply to advise the expected non-custodial spouse of how much child support he or she would be obligated to pay in the event of a divorce.

At least that’s the cynical conclusion of a study recently reported on by the Observer UK. But “word on the street” in this country does lend some support to the study’s conclusions even outside the UK.

You can read more about reaction to the study in the UK in Cash fears lead to fall in divorce rates.

You consult an attorney. You retain him/her. You give him/her a braindump of all the pertinent facts about your case. You bring him/her all the financial documents that he/she asked you for. He/she gives you some instructions about additional requirements you must fulfill. You fill out a bunch of paperwork. When you walk out of the attorney’s office, you leave the case in your attorney’s expert hands. Now you wait for him/her to tell you when it’s over. Right?

A lot of people seem to think so. But, in most cases: wrong, bad idea. Perhaps, unfortunately so. But, nonetheless: wrong, bad idea.

These days, it can be an enormous mistake to follow the “blind faith” path described in the opening paragraph of this post, even if it seems to be OK with your lawyer, perhaps especially if it seems to be OK with your lawyer.

Your case is your case. Would you leave it to your criminal lawyer to enter a “surprise-me” plea and tell you what it was after he/she entered it? Would you leave it to your criminal lawyer to try your case and let you know how it turned out afterward? Of course not.

Is custody of your children less important? Or visitation? How about support of your children? What about support for yourself or your spouse? And who gets the house? Who’ll pay the debt? Or dealing with the history of abuse by one spouse? Etc., etc.

While the arguably happy mis-perception of a no-muss, no-fuss divorce may be tempting during the early phase of your case, in some (if not most) cases, if you haven’t been minding your case from the get-go, your pleasant bubble of euphoria may eventually burst – expensively, loudly and gruesomely – leaving behind a lot of damage that cannot be undone easily, maybe not at all.

The process of divorce can vary dramatically from case to case, depending, in part, on the spouses and their respective attorneys. The process can affect the legal results in the case.

Just as importantly, it can affect the emotional outcome of the case, the quality of the post-divorce relationships of ex-spouses, co-parents and children. Make no mistake: it is you and your family who will have to pick up the pieces – alone, after the lawyers move on to their next cases, sadly, often without a backward glance.

It is important to determine at your initial consultation whether the attorney you will be retaining views the case as the lawyer’s case or as the client’s case. This will tell you a lot about the likely process of your divorce – and whether you want a particular attorney to be the one helping you to shape the process of your divorce case.

One extreme case going on right now. Long term marriage. Couple’s behavior indicates that they have not totally given up on being a couple and a family. I mention the possibility of reconciliation frequently to my client, the husband.

Wife’s lawyer embarks on a legal crusade, an expensive crusade, pouring oil on the couple’s still-flickering flames. Not unpredictably, wife has second thoughts about reconciling.

I suggest to the husband that he and his wife consider a “stay” (or hold) in the case for a while, so they can concentrate on trying to reconcile without having to deal with the “bad blood” being aroused by what had quite unnecessarily (in this case) turned into a legal battle. The couple agrees.

I contact wife’s lawyer to get his written agreement to a stay. Amazingly, wife’s lawyer rejects the stay, while acknowledging that couple is talking reconciliation.

Since, surprisingly, it is necessary, I push harder on Wife’s lawyer to agree to the stay, without having to waste time and money on taking it to the judge. Knowing he will lose this one, he grudgingly relents and agrees to a 30 day stay – providing that he be allowed to file one motion during the stay. Husband agrees.

While the parties are trying to reconcile, wife’s lawyer’s serves not an ordinary motion but a nasty (and completely unnecessary) motion. Wife tells husband that she instructed her lawyer to take out the nasty parts of the motion, but she guesses “he couldn’t help himself”.

Thirty days goes by. Reconciliation is still on track. I so advise Wife’s lawyer and request an extension of the stay.

Again, Wife’s lawyer refuses. However, Wife’s lawyer drops part of his crusade. But he replies that Wife is anxious to proceed with divorce. News to me.

I relay to client, and wife and husband speak again. Husband reports that wife never told her lawyer that she wanted to proceed with the divorce, only that she wanted to continue the stay.

Remarkably, this is still going back and forth. Unfortunately, Wife didn’t give any thought to the process of her divorce back at the beginning, Wife is overly-deferential to her overzealous attorney – and Wife’s attorney views the case as his case and views his client as little more than a chess piece for him to push around his game board.

But the couple is still working on reconciling.

I can take care of wife’s mis-guided attorney and his questionable tactics. It’s just sad that it’s necessary. And that the family has to pay for it.

Mind your case. And avoid what is happening to this family – and many other families – where one of the parties drops the ball and doesn’t mind their case.

Why in the world would a biological mother bring an action to adopt her own child?

In extreme cases of abandonment, abuse or neglect of a child, an action can be brought to terminate the legal rights of biological parent(s) to his/her own child. Usually the party bringing that drastic action is the state which has intervened to protect the child, and generally only after exhaustive efforts have been made to rehabilitate the parent’s parenting.

But an interested private party can also bring an action to terminate parental rights.

At the time that a child is legally adopted, all legal rights of the biological parents to that child terminate as a result of the adoption. An adoption case, in effect, includes a “streamlined” termination of parental rights case – without all the “rough edges”.

In a recent New York case, a child’s mother reportedly tried to adopt her own child – with the alleged intention of “quietly” terminating the legal rights of the allegedly abusive biological father of the child.

The New York courts disallowed the mother’s reportedly “sneak attempt” to terminate the father’s parental rights because they found that the mother didn’t comply with the stricter requirements of a full-blown termination of parental rights action. If the mother wanted to terminate the father’s parental rights, she couldn’t cut corners; she had to bring an action to properly do precisely that.