6 Tips for an Uncontested Divorce in Florida

In doing your uncontested divorce in Florida, you can use the Florida forms, you can prepare the documents yourself, or you can have a divorce lawyer (or family law attorney) prepare the documents for you. Whichever way you decide to go, here are six tips to make an uncontested Florida divorce a reality for you.

1. Determine whether in fact your marriage is broken and cannot be repaired. Nothing is worse than you trying to get a divorce in an amicable fashion when your spouse thinks it can be worked out. In this instance, your uncontested divorce will likely take longer or never happen, meaning it will become contested, while your spouse puts off discussing the issues you need to resolve.

2. If you have children, discuss who they will live with and who will have visitation. A carefully drafted visitation schedule should take into account not only the rights of each parent to spend time with the children, but also the children’s schedule, particularly when they are older.

3. Calculate the child support. Child support in Florida is based on the parties’ net (that is, after tax) income and the amount of time they spend with the children. Unless the children are spending more than forty percent with the parent who has visitation, the standard Florida child support guidelines will apply. More than forty percent time sharing will result in adjustments to that amount. (A discussion of child support when there are children with special needs is beyond the scope of this article.)

Three important things to note about child support payments:

First, if you’re the parent paying it and your are not seeing the children for any reason, you cannot stop paying child support.

Second, if you’re the party who should be receiving it, you do not stop or interfere with visitation if the other parent is not paying it. Only the court can determine that, and nothing makes family judges more upset than parties playing games with visitation and child support.

Lastly, it doesn’t matter what your expenses are—as far as the court is concerned, child support is the number one obligation you will have; it comes before paying your other creditors, like your credit card and car payments, etc.

4. Inventory the property you own and debts you owe. Make a list of both these things, and sit down with your spouse to decide how these will be divided. If you both have property or debt from before the marriage, you need to address those issues too.

5. Make an agreement. Whatever you and your spouse agree on, write it down. This will be your marital settlement agreement which the court will incorporate into your final judgment of dissolution of marriage. This also means, once part of the final judgment, that both of you must comply with the terms of it as if it were set out in the final judgment itself—it will become an order of the court directed at you, the parties to the divorce.

6. If you have any questions, get a consultation with an attorney. Doing your uncontested divorce doesn’t mean you have to do without legal advice on divorce, particularly the legal consequences of any decision you want to make regarding your divorce---once you agree to certain things, you may not be able to change them. Rather, uncontested means you and your spouse will not contest or disagree, not that you and your spouse will not know the legal consequences of your agreement; so seek legal advice for divorce.

(c) Vivian Rodriguez