The United States House of Representatives recently passed, by an overwhelming margin, a measure designed to protect deployed military service members involved in child custody disputes. H.R. 4201, the Servicemember Family Protection Act, was introduced by Representative Mike Turner of Ohio and passed the House after a vote of 390-2.…
A 23-year-old mother was recently charged with one count of child neglect after her 11-month-old son was found alone in a Miami motel room. According to police, the mother left her infant unattended in a playpen for several hours in a room at the motel on May 13th. A motel…
Governor Rick Scott recently signed a 61-page document that has essentially rewritten Florida adoption laws. House Bill 1355, titled “Protection of Vulnerable Persons,” was created after a Baker County judge reportedly placed a four-year-old girl in the custody of a registered sex-offender who was not her biological father in July…
According to the National Center for State Courts, approximately 18 million children in the United States have parents who are separated or no longer married and the parents of another 17 million children never married one another. About 25 percent of those children have a parent who resides in another…
Yesterday, a judge in Miami-Dade’s Family Court lifted an emergency protection order that forbade a 22-year-old father from seeing his 3-year-old daughter. The father is currently engaged in a custody battle with the child’s mother, a Venezuelan national who reportedly accused him of kidnapping their daughter in March 2011. She…
A Titusville father and his girlfriend are being held without bail in Brevard County after authorities reportedly removed a 12-year-old boy who was allegedly starved and locked in a small closet in their home. The son of the 38-year-old father was reportedly taken to a local hospital where he was…
This week, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal declined to disqualify Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria Espinosa Dennis from a child custody case between two prominent area lawyers. After the two attorneys divorced in 2005, the former couple agreed to share custody of their two small children equally. Since that time,…
A Miami-Dade judge has refused to recuse herself in a heated Florida custody dispute between two prominent attorneys, despite her alleged ties to the law firm representing the former wife. The spouses divorced in 2005 after seven years of marriage. At the time of their divorce, the couple reportedly agreed…
The Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal recently ruled in a case of first impression involving a same sex partnership child custody dispute. In a rather unique case, two women involved in a same sex partnership decided to have a child after engaging in a committed relationship for 11 years.…
A Lee County judge signed an order Thursday demanding the return of Country singer Mindy McCready’s 5-year-old son, Zander, to his maternal grandmother’s care in Florida. McCready reportedly took the boy to her home in Tennessee after visiting him late last month at her father’s Florida home. McCready, who is…