Bowman v. Kardash
In a contentious paternity case, the trial court awarded equal unsupervised timesharing and fully shared parental responsibility despite extensive findings about the mother's extreme, erratic behavior. The Second District affirmed the equal timesharing award but held it was an abuse of discretion to omit protective measures (counseling and psychiatric medication compliance) on which the psychologist's recommendation for unsupervised timesharing was expressly conditioned, and remanded for the court to revisit its shared parental responsibility award or explain why it declined to tailor responsibility under section 61.13(2)(c)4-5.
Key facts
- Mother and father disputed timesharing and parental responsibility in a paternity case where the trial court made extensive findings about the mother's extreme and erratic behavior.
- The trial court awarded the parents equal unsupervised timesharing and fully shared parental responsibility, relying heavily on a psychologist's recommendation for equal timesharing that was expressly conditioned on the mother's continued counseling and psychiatric medication compliance.
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Why it matters
Practitioners handling high-conflict paternity and parenting cases can use this opinion two ways: to argue that a trial court must incorporate the conditions underlying an expert's timesharing recommendation as… — full analysis with a trial
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