Category: Family Law

Make Your Holiday a Happy Holiday

The family law offices of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. will close at 12 PM on Tuesday, December 24 for the Christmas holiday and will have limited office hours until January 2, 2020. We wish you and your family a Happy Chanukah, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Below are some tips to help make your family holiday a happy holiday this year.

Happy Holiday2

Before the arrival of the holidays is the time to resolve child custody and timesharing problems so you can enjoy your family on the holidays with minimum stress. Here are suggestions to make your holiday timesharing issues a little easier:

  • Alternate. Some families alternate the holiday every other year. If you get the kids this year, next year will be the other parent’s turn. Having a regular plan to fall back on can eliminate the potential for what is fair.
  • Be flexible. An easy holiday schedule for everyone may require some changes from the normal visitation schedule.
  • Be respectful. You may not want to be friends anymore, but you need to figure out how to communicate with your ex without all the emotional baggage.
  • Don’t mix issues. Do not bring up unrelated issues which could make a problem free Christmas dinner impossible. Set aside your differences until after the holiday season.
  • Pick your battles. Christmas may even be more important to you than Easter is to your ex-spouse. Don’t fight just for the sake of fighting.
  • Protect the children. Your children’s memories of Christmas morning should be about family, food and fun. They should not be forced to witness you and another parent arguing.
  • Plan. Start talking about the holiday visitation schedule sooner rather than later, the longer you wait the harder it can be.

Going through separation, divorce and family law issues during the holidays is always stressful. But, the weather has cooled and the kids are on vacation. Try to make the holidays the best time of year.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

The divorce and family law offices of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. will close at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, November 27 for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will re-open at 9:00 AM on Monday, December 2, 2019. We wish you and your family a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving

Before Thanksgiving’s arrival is the time to resolve child custody and timesharing problems so you can enjoy your turkey dinner with minimum stress for you and your children. Below are suggestions to make your Thanksgiving visitation issues a little easier:

Alternate. Some families alternate Thanksgiving every other year. If you get the kids for Thanksgiving this year, next year will be the other parent’s turn. Having a regular plan to fall back on can eliminate the potential for what is fair.

Be flexible. An easy Thanksgiving schedule for everyone may require some changes from the normal visitation schedule.

Be respectful. You may not want to be friends anymore, but you need to figure out how to communicate with your ex without all the emotional baggage.

Don’t mix issues. Do not bring up unrelated issues which could make a problem free Thanksgiving dinner impossible. Set aside your differences until after the holiday season.

Pick your battles. Thanksgiving may be more important to you than Easter is to your ex-spouse. Don’t fight just for the sake of fighting.

Protect the children. Your children’s memories of Thanksgiving should be about great food and family fun. They should not be forced to witness you and another parent arguing.

Plan. Start talking about the holiday visitation schedule sooner rather than later, the longer you wait the harder it can be.

Thanksgiving can be stressful. But the weather has cooled and the kids are on vacation. Try to make the holidays the best time of year.

 

 

New Article: Daubert House

My new article on the changes to our expert witness rules, which impact all family law and divorce cases, is now available at the Family Law Section website. Daubert House not only discusses Florida’s changes to the expert witness rules, it mixes in references to National Lampoon’s Animal House for reasons those familiar with the Florida Supreme Court’s recent opinion will understand.

family law daubert

Were the Changes Even Constitutional?

In amending the Florida Evidence Code, the Legislature bound Florida courts to the Daubert standard for the admission of expert testimony and opinions. However, those changes were short lived. The Florida Bar Board of Governors and several Florida Bar committees strongly opposed the changes.

Up until recently, there was also the controversy lingering about the constitutionality of what the Florida Legislature did. While the Legislature can enact substantive law, only the Supreme Court can regulate courtroom practice and procedure.

The trick is that the Evidence Code contains both substantive and procedural provisions. If the Legislative branch encroached on the judicial branch, the changes are subject to a strict separation of powers doctrine review.

In response, the Florida Supreme Court declined to adopt the Daubert Amendment to the extent that it is procedural, due to the constitutional concerns raised. The Florida Supreme Court instead left it for a proper case or controversy.

That case was DeLisle v. Crane. The Florida Supreme Court found that the Legislative amendments to Section 90.702 were not substantive because they did not “create, define, or regulate a right”, but was procedural rulemaking instead.

Additionally, the Court held that the Daubert amendment conflicted with the exiting Frye rule because Frye and Daubert were competing methods to determine the reliability of expert testimony. Once again, Frye was the appropriate test in Florida courts. Unknown to everyone, Frye was on “Double Secret Probation.”

Faber College

After our new governor was sworn into office, he appointed three new Florida Supreme Court justices. This year, the Florida Supreme Court, without re-addressing the correctness of its own ruling in DeLisle, chose to recede from its prior decision not to adopt the Legislature’s Daubert amendments.

The dissent, made reference to the movie Animal House:“Like the little-known codicil in the Faber College constitution . . .” in objecting to the manner in which the majority of the Florida Supreme Court re-adopted Daubert.

Effective immediately, the Florida Supreme Court adopted the Legislatures’ 2013 amendments to section 90.702 as procedural rules of evidence, and adopted the amendment to section 90.704 to the extent it is procedural.

The article is available on the Florida Bar’s Family Law Section website here.

 

Social Media, Family Law, and Russian Hacking

Hypothetically, if Vladimir Putin opened fake social media accounts in your name to ruin your family law custody case, what would happen? An unfortunate Florida woman, who was recently sentenced to five months in jail for a few posts on her Facebook page, found out the hard way.

Social Media Family Law

News Feed

The Father, Timothy Weiner, had been warned. The judge in his custody case ordered him to stop harassing his ex-wife on Facebook. The family court judge issued two orders to keep any information about the case off social media and prevent family members from publishing information about the custody action on social media.

“Neither parent,” Pasco Circuit judge Lauralee Westine wrote in her order after the September hearing, “shall disparage or threaten the other parent on social media.”

But a week later, a photo of his ex-wife surfaced on a father’s rights Facebook page called “Mothers who abuse kids.” Weiner hit the “like” button. Fast forward to this summer. The Father’s new wife, Jessie Weiner, who is not a party to his custody case, was not served with the order.

In one of Ms. Weiner’s Facebook posts, sensitive family court documents concerning her Husband’s child from his previous marriage were posted. Court records indicate that someone on Weiner’s Facebook even shared an old news article about when her husband was jailed over a Facebook post.

The uploaded Facebook documents had to do with the ongoing family law custody case between Weiner’s husband and his ex. The family judge was not amused, and took swift action. She entered an order directing Ms. Weiner to show cause why she should not be held in indirect criminal contempt for failing to obey her orders.

Ms. Weiner received the order to show up in court the day before the 4:30 p.m. hearing that had been scheduled. Her lawyer, whom she retained on the same day as the hearing, argued for dismissal, for the judge’s disqualification, and for a continuance.

“Next thing I know, I hear five months in the county jail. “No matter what I said, I was guilty.”

The family judge denied all of her motions, found Ms. Weiner guilty of indirect criminal contempt, and sentenced her to five months’ confinement in jail for contempt of court.

What if, as Ms. Weiner argued, the social media accounts were not authentic, i.e. she didn’t make the Facebook posts?

Florida Authenticity and Social Media

I’ve written about the widespread use of social media in society, and how that impacts family court cases. Especially when it comes to authenticating documents in family court.

Some exhibits are so trustworthy they don’t even require a witness to authenticate. Evidence Rule 201 lists matters which a court must judicially notice, meaning a judge does not have discretion but to admit indisputable evidence.

The list is short, and includes laws of the Congress and Florida Legislature; Florida statewide rules of court, rules of United States courts, and U.S. Supreme Court rules.

Rule 202 includes even more matters, but also provides judges leeway in deciding whether or not to take judicial notice. For example, the statute allows a court to take judicial notice of facts that are not subject to dispute because they are “generally known within the territorial jurisdiction of the court”, and facts that are not subject to dispute because they are “capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot be questioned.”

But with the Russian election scandal, and the widespread use of fake social media accounts, you have to start to wonder whether the genuineness assumption of evidence in family court still stands.

Governments manipulate photographs. It is not unheard of for spouses to hack computers and borrow smartphones to impersonate their owners’ texts. Anyone can set up a Facebook page, email, Instagram, or twitter account.

The increasing use of electronic evidence at trial, and the ease with which it is impersonated and manipulated, pressures us to bolster foundational evidence more than ever. Unfortunately for Ms. Weiner, she was jailed before she could even challenge the evidence.

What’s on your mind?

The Second District Court of Appeals had no trouble quashing the contempt order and freeing Ms. Weiner . . . after she served a month in jail.

First, the order violated Ms. Weiner’s due process rights because she was not subject to or served with the court order that she was accused of disobeying.

Second, the order to show cause was never served on Ms. Weiner within a “reasonable time allowed for preparation of the defense,” as required by Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure. Ms. Weiner’s name did not appear in the order’s service list, and it is undisputed that she received the order the day before the hearing and did not engage counsel until the morning of the hearing.

Finally, the trial judge should have disqualified herself because the contempt conduct involved disrespect and criticism of the judge.

This rule assures that a person cited for a contempt of court which involved a criticism of a judge, would not be tried before the judge who was the subject of the criticism.

The opinion is here.

 

Family Court Services Lunch and Learn

I wanted to thank Family Court Services for hosting their Lunch and Learn series yesterday at the Family Division court located in the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center. A special thanks to Judge Jason Emilios Dimitris and Dr. Netta Shaked for inviting me to speak with them on how to “Keep Calm and Survive a Licensing Board, Florida Bar, or JQC complaint.”

family law

Family Court Services

Where do parents turn to when they are unable to focus on their children’s needs due to their own turmoil in divorce and family law proceedings? Where can children find people to talk to who know what they are going through? The answer is Family Court Services.

Miami-Dade County is fortunate to have Family Court Services, which has been providing unique and crucial services to children and families for more than 20 years.

Family Court Services also assists all the judges and general magistrates in the family division with some of the Court’s most difficult family cases by providing solution-focused and brief therapeutic interventions.

KidSide

The mission of Family Court Services is helped through KidSide, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that supports Family Court Services in its mission to help high-conflict families heal. Gifts and donations to KidSide, Inc. are tax deductible to the extent provided by law.

Information on helping KidSide is here.

 

Family Law Super Lawyers

I am very pleased to announce that I have been selected to the 2018 Super Lawyers list in the area of Family Law. Super Lawyers is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement.

Family Law Superlawyer

Superlawyers

Super Lawyers is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement.

The annual selections are made using a patented multi-phase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area. The result is a credible, comprehensive and diverse listing of exceptional attorneys.

The Super Lawyers lists are published nationwide in Super Lawyers Magazines and in leading city and regional magazines and newspapers across the country. Super Lawyers Magazines also feature editorial profiles of attorneys who embody excellence in the practice of law.

Florida Board Certification

“Board Certification” in Florida, mean certification from The Florida Bar, and recognizes attorneys’ special knowledge, skills and proficiency in various areas of law and professionalism and ethics in practice.

Board certified lawyers are evaluated for professionalism and tested for expertise. Certification is the Florida Bar’s highest level of evaluation of the competency and experience of attorneys in the 26 areas of law approved for certification by the Supreme Court of Florida.

In addition to being named in Superlawyers, I am also board certified in marital and family law, currently serve on the Executive Council of the Family Law Section of the Florida Bar, and I am a member of both the California and Florida Bars. One of my recent article “To Catch a Time-sharing Deviation” was published in The Florida Bar Journal.

The article, “To Catch a Time-sharing Deviation”, is also cited as a reference in the Florida Benchbook – which is published by the Office of the State Courts Administrator. I am also a frequent speaker, and have lectured to different professional organizations including, the Florida Bar, the Florida Chapter of the AFCC; Miami-Dade County Family Court Services; and The First Family Law American Inns of Court.

For more on Family Law Super Lawyers visit Superlawyers.

 

Family Law is Moving!

We’re pleased to announce that, beginning Monday, May 7, 2018, one of Florida’s premier marital and family law firms, the Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A., will be starting the workday in our new offices at One Biscayne Tower.

One Biscayne Tower

That’s right, we’re moving around the corner, across the street from Bayfront Park and Biscayne Bay. The new office building is named One Biscayne Tower and the address is:

2 South Biscayne Boulevard

Suite 3400

Miami, FL 33131

One Biscayne Tower is an iconic skyscraper on Biscayne Boulevard across from Bayfront Park. It comprises “Class A” office space and has been a long-standing symbol of the City of Miami.

The building often appears on postcards of the Miami skyline and is a signature building of Miami. Our new offices provide sweeping views of beautiful Biscayne Bay, the park, and bustling downtown Miami.

One Biscayne Tower has won five Office Building of the Year (TOBY) Awards, including the 2007 Miami-Dade TOBY Award and the 2007 BOMA Southern Regional TOBY.

Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A

Specializing in all family law matters both domestically and abroad, our lawyers are experienced in sophisticated marital and family law cases and led by a lawyer who is board-certified in marital and family law by the Florida Bar Board of Legal Specialization and Education.

A “Super Lawyer”, accomplished writer and speaker, Executive Council of the Florida Bar’s Family Law Section, our attorneys and firm have been professionally admired for serving our clients with the utmost skill, discretion and confidentiality in divorces, alimony, child custody and relocation cases, as well as prenuptial and postnuptial agreements.

Our firm website is here.

 

Inns of Court Award

I was honored last night to receive an award for serving as President of our Inn of Court, the First Family Law American Inn of Court, for the 2016-2017 Inn year.

I have written about the American Inns of Court before. The First Family Law American Inn of Court in Miami is a group consisting of lawyers, judges, magistrates, and judicial officers dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility and excellence in the area of divorce, family law, child custody and related matters.

In recent Inns news, our Inns sponsored a Town Hall meeting for the Family Law Bench and Bar of the Family Division of the 11th Judicial Circuit. The event was held at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse and hosted by the Hon. Scott Bernstein, Administrative Judge of the Family Division, and attended by members of the Bar, and almost all of the family division bench – including many incoming judges.

Sponsorship of Town Hall meetings helps our Inns of Court fulfill its mission to inspire the legal community, and to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education and mentoring.

 

Family Law Inns of Court

I was honored to be sworn in as a member of the Board of Directors of the First Family Law American Inns of Court in Miami last night by Judge David Young and Judge Valerie Manno Schurr, Associate Administrative Judge of the Dade County Circuit Family Division.

The family division of the Dade County court system is one of the largest in the country, and handles thousands of divorces, separations, paternity cases, child custody cases, relocation cases, and family law cases a year.

The First Family Law American Inns of Court in Miami is a group consisting of lawyers, judges, magistrates, and judicial officers dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility and excellence in the area of family law. I am currently serving as the immediate Past President of our Inns of Court this term.

Our Inns will once again be sponsoring the Town Hall meeting involving family law with the Hon. Scott Bernstein, Administrative Judge of the Family Division. Sponsorship of Town Hall meetings helps our Inns of Court fulfill its mission to inspire the legal community, and to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education and mentoring.

 

Deportation: Family Law’s New Weapon

President Trump signed Executive Order 13768, allowing individuals to be more easily deported. The Executive Order may turn out to be a tough, new tactic in family law cases.

On January 25, 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13768 entitled: “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”. This Executive Order allows individuals to be deported for a variety of reasons, and also restricts sanctuary.

I have written about divorce planning before, especially as it concerns taxes and other issues. The new Executive Order may impact many divorce and family law cases in South Florida, because this area has attracted many immigrants, and parents may be deported during proceedings.

New Deportation Procedures

A federal immigration enforcement program being implemented by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — has become the subject of nationwide commentary.

In some jurisdictions, any time an individual is arrested and booked into a local jail, his or her fingerprints are electronically run through ICE’s immigration database.  This allows ICE to identify non-citizens, and potentially initiate deportation proceedings against them.

Increasing Deportations

Executive Order 13768 provides that ICE will not exempt classes or categories of removal aliens from potential enforcement. All of those presently in violation of our immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention, and, if found removable by final order, removed from the United States.

That includes people convicted of fraud in any official matter before a governmental agency, and people who “have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits.”

Impact on Family Law

By expanding the risks of deportation, the Executive Order creates potential new weapons for people planning to get divorced, or open any kind of family law proceeding – from child support to divorce.

For example, merely threatening to have an alien spouse or partner deported may be a way of preventing a battered spouse from seeking protection against domestic violence.

Additionally, a parent who has a child with an alien, or is married to an alien, could use the threat of deportation if the alien parent tries to file a complaint in court to establish or collect support.

South Florida Cases

This is a big problem in South Florida, a place that welcomes immigrants. As CNN reports, the Miami-Dade County Mayor has instructed the County to comply with all immigration detainer requests received form the Department of Homeland Security.

The Executive Order increases the chances a parent can be deported. This new law provides ammunition for citizens litigating against aliens in family law cases.

The CNN article is here.