Can I Relocate With My Child After Divorce?

Can I Relocate With My Child After DivorceEven after a divorce is final, there are a number of situations and circumstances that can cause friction between you and your co-parent. Cohabitation is a difficult topic to discuss, particularly if the co-parenting relationship is contentious. If you want to relocate out of state with your child, you’ll have to meet certain standards set by the court.

Distance Matters

Florida law allows a parent to move within 50 miles of their current residence with their child. A move of this distance does not require any additional paperwork or permission from the other parent. If you want to move more than 50 miles away from your place of residence, you must get written agreement from the other parent or serving a Petition to Relocate. Moving without the permission of the other parent or the court may put you in contempt of a court order, and as a result, you may be required to return to your previous residence. A previous attempt to move without permission can be taken into account in future modifications of your timesharing schedule or parenting plan. read more

Property Division – Deciding Who Gets What After the Divorce

Divorce LawyerDivorce is complicated on any number of issues.  One of them is property division.  Some people think property division should be exactly equal.  Other people think if they made more money, (and therefore paid for more things during the course of the marriage) they should get more of the property.  Neither of these approaches is necessarily correct. Dividing property in a divorce occurs in stages.

  1. Identify the Property at Issue

The first step in dividing property during a divorce is identifying the property at issue.  Property acquired during the marriage is, by and large, marital property.  Similarly, property each person brought in to the marriage is, by and large, non-marital property.  For example, if someone enters the marriage with their great grandmother’s 3 carat diamond ring, the ring most likely remains premarital property and is not considered during property division. read more

Strategies for Keeping Divorce Costs Low

Divorce LawyerDivorce can be costly, both financially and emotionally.  There are some divorce costs that cannot be avoided.  However, there are other divorce costs that could be forgone, if people knew strategies to adopt during the divorce process.

Every Divorce is Different

Every divorce is different.  This means that your friend’s experience, or your sister’s experience, or your co-worker’s experience with their divorce will be different than yours.  Some people spend a lot of time (and a lot of attorney billable hours) calling their attorney and asking why their friend got a larger cash settlement, a different timesharing schedule for the children, or was able to keep the house.  However, divorce settlements don’t happen in a vacuum.  Unless your attorney also represented your friend or sister or coworker, they can’t possibly know sufficient details to determine why they got a different settlement.  Even if they did represent the other person, they can’t disclose confidential information about another client’s divorce.  Rather than asking your attorney to consider another person’s divorce, focus on your own case. read more