Category: Child Custody

The coronavirus has brought a whole new type of family law dispute into relevance when it comes to custody issues. A number of doctors, first responders, and other healthcare workers here in Florida have found themselves subject to emergency court orders, whereby they can very quickly lose shared custody of their children simply due to their profession until the pandemic is over.

Take one doctor in South Florida who was the subject of an NBC Miami story and whose child’s father requested and received an emergency order granting him sole custody entirely related to the COVID-19 outbreak even though she tested negative for the coronavirus because the judge deemed that it was necessary to “protect the best interests of the minor child,” including the child’s “safety and welfare.” While that same doctor was able to successfully appeal the emergency order, winning a return to their 50-50 shared custody arrangement while they await a final ruling, she and many others who are divorced parents are either in constant panic or busy fighting these orders, suffering through disrupted lives while they try to help those battling the virus during their workday and custody rights during their personal time.

Many parents these days find it difficult to find that right life-balance when it comes to juggling career, child support, and shared custody after divorce. Recently, CNN ran an interesting piece focusing on some perspectives of fathers, in particular, who feel that the system has let them down. Some of these fathers have spent time in jail because they were unable to pay court-ordered child support; gone bankrupt; or even been altogether barred from seeing their children due to civil protection orders. And not all of them ended up in custody battles due to divorce: some learned all too late that they had fathered children but were excluded from the child’s birth certificate.

According to the statistics, even today, more than 80 percent of custodial parents are mothers. Does this mean that men automatically do not get a fair shake when it comes to custody cases? Laws in states like Florida and elsewhere were supposed to prevent this phenomenon by focusing on what is in the best interests of the child. Still, that doesn’t mean that men do not sometimes get the short end of the stick due to judges’ traditional perspectives. Below, we offer some insight on how fathers can avoid acrimonious outcomes in circumstances like these.