Sunrise, Florida - Broward County
Sunrise Divorce Attorney
Divorce work for west Broward households, with the family home usually at the center of it.
In Sunrise divorces the single largest question is almost always the house. Sawgrass, Welleby, Sunrise Golf Village and the newer communities off Oakland Park Boulevard produced a generation of families whose equity is concentrated in one property, often with a mortgage from a very different rate environment. Whether one spouse keeps it, whether it can be refinanced alone, and what happens to the equity are decisions with years of consequences.
Retirement is the other half of the picture. Public-sector, hospital, airline and utility employment in west Broward means pensions, deferred compensation and 401(k) balances that need to be valued and, where divided, split by a properly drafted order rather than an informal promise.
We handle both the uncontested case, where the goal is an agreement drafted carefully enough to hold, and the contested case, where one spouse is hiding income or refusing to disclose. Julie DiMaggio has done this work from Broward County since 2004.
Filing a Sunrise divorce
- Sunrise residents file in Broward County, in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, with hearings at the Broward County Courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
- One spouse must have lived in Florida for at least six months before filing. Florida is a no-fault state, so only an irretrievably broken marriage need be alleged.
- Both spouses must complete mandatory financial disclosure, including a sworn financial affidavit, tax returns and account statements.
- Marital property is divided equitably, which begins at an equal split and moves only for a stated reason.
- Contested cases are ordered to mediation before trial. Many Sunrise cases resolve there once the numbers are documented.
Sunrise questions we hear
For the full statewide overview of this area of law, see our divorce page.