Florida visitation laws changed to timesharing laws in 2008. The primary goals of these laws are to (1) ease the need for a custodial parent to be determined and (2) to protect the child and keep his or her interests as a central concern throughout custody or divorce proceedings.
How is timesharing affected during the summer?
Generally, the roles of the primary parent and non-primary parent are swapped. For example, the primary parent – the parent who has custody of the child for a majority of time – becomes the non-primary parent during the summer. Generally, the timesharing laws allow for the non-primary parent to have custody of the child for a consecutive 6 weeks with every other weekend going to the primary parent. This switch is the normal practice unless the parents deviate from the standard visitation schedule in the parenting plan, which is also a requirement in visitation cases. If that happens to be the case, it is usually established in the parenting plan established by the parents if they have deviated from the standard schedule.
A family law attorney should be contacted to discuss any wrongful deviations from or necessary modifications to a timesharing plan in order to ensure that the primary goals of the timesharing plan are being met.