Once you are the legal parent of a child, it is difficult to lose your parental rights. The courts acknowledge that parents are only human, and that it is almost always in a child’s best interest to stay with his or her own parents. For example, having a criminal record or a diagnosis of a mental illness or addiction does not, by itself, mean that the court will reduce or take away your right to spend time with your children or make decisions about them. Involuntary termination of parental rights only happens when it is impossible for the parent to provide adequate care for the child or when the parent has seriously endangered the child.

Bases for Involuntary Termination of Parental Rights

These are some of the cases in which Florida courts can terminate a parent’s parental rights.

• Long prison sentences: Most prison sentences do not cost parents their parental rights. If the parent’s sentence is no long that the child will have turned 18 by the time the parent is released, the court may terminate the parent’s rights.
• Breach of case plan: If the parent has repeatedly failed to meet the requirements of a case plan set by the Department of Children and Families, the parent may lose his or her parental rights.
• Abuse: Physical and sexual abuse of a child can be grounds for termination of parental rights.  Depending on the severity of the abuse, a single incident can be grounds for termination of rights.
• Failure to comply with substance abuse treatment: If a mother gives birth to a child whose bodily fluids test positive for alcohol or illicit drugs, the court will require the mother to undergo addiction treatment. If she fails to comply with treatment, she can lose her parental rights. If she gives birth to a subsequent child, and this second child also tests positive for drugs or alcohol, she will automatically lose her rights to both children.
• Violent sex crimes: If the parent is convicted of a crime that requires the parent to register as a sexual predator, the parent will lose parental rights. According to Florida law, not every sex offender is a sexual predator. Florida also requires people to register as sex offenders for non-violent crimes such as failure to notify a partner of your HIV-positive status, even if you use condoms or take medications to reduce your risk of transmitting the virus, and “Romeo and Juliet” relationships, which are consensual relationships between teens who are close in age, but only one is a legal adult. Sexual predators are people who have been convicted either of violent sex crimes or sexual abuse of minors.

Contact Alan Burton About Parental Rights

It is possible to reinstate your parental rights after they have been terminated, but it is very difficult. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida to find out how Florida’s parental rights laws apply to your situation.

Details of the Miranda Wilkerson Case

Trista Crews and Donald Coleman met and began their relationship in 1997, when she was 14 and he was 38. They married when Trista was 16, with Trista’s mother Rita Manning giving consent for her underage daughter to marry. Nonetheless, Coleman eventually had to register as a sex offender because of the age difference in his relationship with Trista. They would go on to have three children together before separating in 2007.

Trista was separated from Donald Coleman at the time of Miranda’s birth, and he filed for divorce at around that time because he doubted that he was Miranda’s biological father. About a month later, Trista died in a car accident, and her mother Rita Manning assumed responsibility for Miranda’s care. After a long custody battle between Manning and Coleman, a judge finally awarded custody of Miranda to Coleman, who was then living in Georgia. Miranda was then three years old, and she had lived with her grandmother almost since birth. Miranda’s biological father has since tried to get custody of her, but currently available news reports offer few details about that aspect of the case.

What About Grandparents’ Rights?

To anyone who has never dealt with Florida’s paternity laws, the outcome of the case is very strange indeed. Why would the court take a child away from her grandmother, the only parental figure she has ever known, and give custody to a man who has never claimed to be her biological father? Does the fact that Coleman is registered as a sex offender for beginning a relationship with a teenager when he was nearly 40 not weaken his case at all? It sounds like a case in which the court gave more weight to the mother’s legal marriage than to anyone’s relationship with the child. In Florida, parenting plans can include clauses about children spending certain amounts of time with grandparents, so one can hope that Miranda has been able to continue to have a close relationship with her grandmother.

Contact Alan Burton About Child Custody Cases

In determining child custody, judges are required to base their decisions on the best interests of the child. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida if you think that a family court has put your child or grandchild in a custody situation that is not in his or her best interest.

The Mother’s Husband is the Child’s Father by Default

If the mother is married at the time of the child’s birth, her husband becomes the legal father by default. Why is this the case in an age when DNA paternity testing is so accurate and so inexpensive? Part of the reason goes back to the days before DNA testing was available. Before the 1990s, alleging that the father of a married woman’s child was someone other than her husband required nothing short of character assassination, and it was almost impossible to prove.  Even now that matters of biological paternity are so easy to determine through DNA testing, Florida courts still prefer to keep families intact. If a child has been raised by two parents since birth, the courts favor arrangements where those two adults remain the primary caregivers until the child reaches adulthood. (This is the logic behind the trend toward timesharing in Florida’s parenting plans.)

The Flynn v. McCraney Case, in Which a Biological Father Sued for Paternity and Lost

The Flynn v. McCraney and McCraney case involves a man (Flynn) who fathered a child by a woman (Mrs. McCraney) who was married to another man (Mr. McCraney). When the child was born, the courts named Mr. McCraney as the legal father. Flynn sued for paternity, but the court ruled that, if a child is born to an intact marriage, even proof of another man’s biological paternity cannot take away the mother’s husband’s legal paternity. This ruling followed the precedent of the Slowinski v. Sweeney case from several years earlier, which had the same outcome. In that case, the mother had died, and thus her husband was the only parent who had had a relationship with the child throughout the child’s entire life.

Alan Burton Defends the Legal Rights of Parents and Children

Florida family courts are committed to basing their decisions on the best interests of the child. If you think that you and your child have a legal right to a better arrangement, contact Alan Burton in Boca Raton, Florida.

The Parker v. Parker case represents a worst-case scenario for fathers. If all you knew about the case were news headlines, you would recognize it as the case where a man disproved his paternity, but the court ordered him to keep making child support payments for his ex-wife’s son.  In fact, the court made this decision based on the fact that Richard Parker waited a long time (more than a year after the divorce was filed) to challenge his paternity and that his main motivation seemed to be a desire to get out of paying child support.  The court ruled that it was in the child’s best interest not to take away the only father he had ever known.

How to Avoid Paternity Fraud

The best way to deal with paternity fraud is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Few things are more disruptive to a family than finding out that a child’s biological father is someone other than the legal father who shares a strong emotional bond with the child. With the widespread availability of DNA testing, it is easier than ever to prevent situations where parents question a child’s paternity only after the child is old enough to be affected by the situation emotionally.

One possible solution is to perform DNA tests on all children at birth, and to compare their DNA with that of the men presumed to be their fathers. DNA paternity testing costs about $30. It is no more expensive or invasive than the other routine tests performed on newborns. DNA paternity testing is possible even before the child is born. Currently, fetal DNA tests are used to diagnose chromosomal abnormalities before birth. These tests, including amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling (CVS), and non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), pose little risk to the fetus. NIPT can be done as early as the third month of pregnancy. Comparing the DNA of the fetus to that of the father could make these prenatal tests double as paternity tests.

Early DNA Testing Helps Families Make Informed Decisions

Performing paternity tests at the time of the child’s birth, or even before, will not take away the pain of finding out that your wife has been unfaithful. It will, however, give men the chance to decide whether they want to be the child’s legal father even if they are not the biological father.

Alan R. Burton is Here to Help Fathers

Alan R. Burton is committed to being fair to parents and to protecting the best interests of children. Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida, if you think you are being unfairly required to pay child support.

The Facts of the Parker v. Parker Case

Parker v. Parker made news as the case in which a Florida court ordered a man to continue to pay child support for his ex-wife’s son even after a DNA test proved that he was not the child’s biological father.  When Richard Parker and his wife Margaret initiated their divorce, their son was more than a year old. The court ordered Richard to pay $1,200 per month in child support.  Richard fell behind on the child support payments, and the court tried to enforce payment of them. Richard responded by expressing doubt that he was the child’s biological father, as Margaret had been unfaithful to him during the marriage.  Even after the family underwent DNA testing, and the results showed the Richard was not the biological father, the court required him to continue paying child support. Why would a court order a man to pay child support for a child of whom he was not the biological father and whom he did not adopt?

Protecting the Best Interest of the Child

The short answer as to why the court did not release Richard Parker from his child support obligations is “statute of limitations.” The court argued that if Richard had serious doubts about his genetic relationship to the child, he should have raised the issue at the time the divorce papers were filed. The statute of limitations would have given him one year from the time of filing. In actuality, he waited 16 months. To the court, it appeared that Richard only thought to challenge his paternity as a last resort to get out from under a heavy burden of child support obligations.

In awarding rights and obligations to a child’s legal parents, the court must prioritize the best interests of the child. Richard Parker had raised his wife’s son since birth and he seemed to want to continue to be involved in the child’s life, even after the results of the DNA test were revealed.  The family court system is committed to seeing that children are cared for and financially supported; it protects them from being used as a weapon by adults, to punish their ex-spouses.

Alan R. Burton Will Protect Your Child’s Interests and Yours

Paternity is one of the most complex issues in Florida law, and one where a wise and compassionate attorney is most needed.  Contact Alan R. Burton in Boca Raton, Florida about cases involving paternity and child support.

What Rights Do Fathers Have?

You might think that going through the process to establish paternity is unnecessary red tape, especially if you communicate well enough with your child’s mother that there have never been any major disagreements about the child. You might have an unwritten agreement where you take care of the child at certain times and provide some financial support to the child. Without legally establishing paternity, though, anything can change. What if a new partner enters the picture? What if one of you decides to move out of state?

A child’s legal father has certain rights and obligations regarding his children.

• Physical custody: The court can enforce the father’s right to spend a certain number of days per year with the children. (This is called “timesharing” in the Florida parenting plan.)
• Legal custody: The father has the right to act on the children’s behalf and make major decisions regarding them. This is especially important regarding schools; legal custody is the right to decide everything from which school the children attend to which extracurricular activities they can do.
• Child support: You might not think of paying child support as a “right,” but Florida law also considers the father’s needs and ability to pay in determining how much child support her should pay. If the children spend more time with you and your income is lower than your ex’s, the court might require her to pay child support.

How to Get the Court to Recognize You as the Child’s Father

The easiest way for an unmarried father to become recognized as the legal father is to file a Voluntary Acknowledgement of Paternity. Once you and the child’s mother file this signed statement with the court, it will become legally binding 60 days later. The court may or may not ask you to take a DNA test to prove that you are the biological father of the child.

Burton Law Is Here to Help Fathers

When you have established legal paternity, the court cannot take your children away from you, except in very extreme circumstances. Contact Alan Burton in Palm Beach County in order to have the court legally acknowledge you as the father of your children.