Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Child Custody
A parent who is shown to have anger and substance abuse issues may be limited to supervised visits with a child. Can a court order that parent to attend counseling, to refrain from consuming alcohol and/or to join Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)? This was an issue in the case Tucker v. Tucker, 5D23-208 (Fla. 5th DCA July 7, 2023).
In this divorce case, the former wife sought sole parental responsibility and supervised time-sharing for the former husband, alleging he had anger issues and abused alcohol. She presented evidence of the former husband’s verbal abuse and threats toward the parties’ child which included a threat of physically abusing the child because the child would not stop crying. There was also evidence of the former husband’s abuse toward the former wife, their nanny and his threats to harm the family dog. The trial court ultimately agreed with the former wife, ordered supervised visits for the former husband, ordered him to attend counseling, AA and to stop consuming alcohol. The former husband appealed.
The appellate court considered the former husband’s argument that the trial court erred in not giving him a clear path toward gaining unsupervised visits. This argument was rejected on the basis that the Florida Supreme Court ruled there is no such requirement when supervised visits are ordered. However, because the former husband was not given a path toward unsupervised, and at this point his visits are indefinitely supervised, the appellate court held it was error to require him to attend counseling, AA and to abstain from alcohol.
The court reasoned “While it would certainly appear that Former Husband’s alcohol consumption is something that should be addressed if he is to ever gain unsupervised visitation with his son, the court’s stated goal for imposing these requirements as the ‘best interests of the father’ is not the appropriate standard. Here, Former Husband has been given no unsupervised contact with his child and Former Wife has been given sole parental responsibility for all decisions involving the child. The alcohol related prohibitions and mandates imposed by the trial court, being completely untethered to the best interests of the child, were an abuse of the court’s discretion.”
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