Boca Raton Divorce Lawyer Blog

When a couple divorces in Florida while their children are minors, the goal of the family court system is to help them continue to have healthy relationships with their children, even after the parents are no longer married to each other. Unfortunately, child custody is often one of the most contentious issues in a divorce,…

The principle of separation of church and state affects many aspects of United States law, including family law. For example, a marriage ceremony in a church, temple, or mosque is not enough to render a couple legally married under United States law; they must also obtain a marriage license and marriage certificate from the court…

Child support obligations, on the one hand, and the failure to fulfill them, on the other, are among the biggest sources of conflict and resentment among divorced couples. Florida has laws to protect the rights of the parent ordered to pay child support and the one who receives child support payments on behalf of the…

Litigation, in which parties argue their cases before a judge, is only a small part of what happens in Florida’s family law courts. Courts deal with agreements as much as, or more than, they do with disagreements. One might not think of the words “agreement” and “divorce” as belonging together in the same sentence, but…

It may not snow in Florida, but the feeling of the holiday season is already in the air. Every year at around this time, some radio stations begin playing Christmas carols around the clock, while on other stations, radio DJs snark about how Thanksgiving and the winter holidays are peak season for family conflict. It…

There is never a good time to divorce, when everything will be simple, but some issues, such as those related to division of property, seem even more complicated when the parties are elderly.  Perhaps Florida’s most notable case is that of Burt and Lovey Handelsman, who started divorce proceedings after 67 years of marriage and…

News stories about the complicated divorce proceedings of high-powered couples are nothing out of the ordinary in Florida. In many cases, the main complicating factor is the couple’s wealth.  It is not simple to divide a couple’s assets when they own many millions of dollars of property together. In the divorce of Alan Grayson (D-FL),…

A lot of people think of divorce as a legal matter but marriage annulment as a religious matter.  For example, some Christian denominations will annul a marriage if the couple never consummated their marriage sexually, but except where abuse is concerned, family courts in the United States rarely concern themselves with people’s sexual behavior. Perhaps…

Whenever possible, Florida courts give custody of children to the children’s legal mother and legal father. Custody is defined as physical residence with a parent or other legal guardian and decision-making power related to the children’s education, medical care, and other important life events. Usually, the legal mother and legal father are the child’s biological…

According to Florida law, if a woman is married at the time that she gives birth, her husband automatically becomes the legal father, even if neither spouse claims that the husband is or could be the biological father of the child. (This most often happens when the mother is separated from her husband, but they…