BRAWER ,HIRSCH AND ASSOCATIES, P.A.
(http://www.brawerlaw.com)
STRETCHING YOUR FLORIDA FAMILY LAW RETAINER ADVICE
At Brawer, Hirsch and Associates P.A , we are the attorneys who care.
We are here to be part of your solution. These Tips are to insure that we and the other family lawyers you choose to hire do not become part of your problem. Please read it carefully. Some of the material is common sense. Some of it comes directly from the Florida Self Help forms. All of it is designed to help you avoid having our office or your
FL family lawyers spend time doing work you could be doing yourself.
First, when our clients hire us to represent and stand beside them when they appear at the mediation or trial they expect to have beside them the best possible representation and have the benefit of our four decades of our family law experience. That is exactly what we want to provide for them. It is who we are and what we do.
Blog Tip 18 DO NOT WITHHOLD TIME SHARING FOR NON PAYMENT OF CHILD SUPPORT.
Imagine you are the mother of several small children with no job desperately in need of your court ordered child support for food and rent. Imagine the children’s divorced father is involved with a girlfriend and has spent the money he earned for child support on his new girlfriend’s promise ring or wardrobe. Then you get the call he wants to take the children off for his visitation weekend with his new girlfriend. Are we angry yet? The desire to refuse him out of revenge can be overwhelming.
Unfortunately, in Florida it can also be expensive.
Florida case law makes it perfectly clear that withholding child time sharing from a spouse because he or she has failed to pay court ordered child support is not permitted. If the payor in arears wishes to he/she can enforce the final judgment and ask for attorney fees and make up time. That means that if you decide to withhold timesharing you may well wind up paying an attorney to appear with you at an enforcement hearing. Worse, you may wind up paying attorney fees to the denied parent’s attorney.
Choose not to withhold time sharing based upon a failure to pay child support and save money. Doing so will result in an action for enforcement, contempt, or temporary time sharing which takes time to prepare for, time to attend and there will have to be billing for all of the above and attorney fees for the other side.
