Tampa Family Law Law Blog

For Florida parents, children are typically the focal point of their divorce. Decisions about everything from property division to where each person will live may always fall back to the same question -- How will it affect the kids? While this intense respect for the children's best interests can be helpful in most cases, some parents take matters too far as they try to shift child custody in their own favor. 

An out-of-state court recently upheld a ruling that gave sole custody of six children to their father. The mother had initially been granted custody. The couple married back in 1998 and had six children, whom the mother cared for while the father worked. In 2014 he moved out of the family home, ultimately filing for divorce a year later. 

Worth more than $5 million? One family law expert says that this is the financial threshold where fighting during divorce takes a nosedive. What about the upper middle class, who typically have anywhere from $1 to $5 million at their disposal? Well, he recently nicknamed them the fighting class. 

Many people in Florida have the image of wealthy couples going to war during a divorce, but this is not totally accurate. While wealthy couples who have more than $5 million might fight over some things, they do so far less frequently and with the aid of proxies, who handle the details for them. Turns out that fighting more because more money is involved simply is not true, because once those finances are split both people can still live comfortably. 

In the not-too-distant past, most people in Florida assumed that men always end up having to pay their exes spousal support. Although it is true that men typically pay alimony more frequently than their female counterparts, it is not because of their gender. Several factors come into play when figuring out who -- if anyone -- pays support.

Alimony -- commonly called spousal support -- is not an easy subject to deal with. After all, no one particularly likes the idea of making regular payments to their ex even after their divorce is finalized. Still, alimony is an important topic for many reasons. If you did not work during your marriage you may need time to develop a financial safety net. If your ex took on less responsibilities at work to take on extra child rearing duties then he or she might require job training. Alimony provides the necessary financial support until you are ready to be on your own.

While many states have abandoned permanent alimony, Florida is not one of them. Here, there is still a belief that it is a necessity in some divorce cases -- but not all. If you are preparing to go through the divorce process, you may have some questions about permanent alimony, such as: Who can get it, is it really permanent, and is it ever adjustable?

This type of spousal support is really for individuals who have been in long-term marriages. There are a number of factors that the court will look at before deciding if permanent alimony makes sense and how much the receiving spouse should get.