West Palm Beach, Florida - Palm Beach County
West Palm Beach Child Custody Attorney
Parenting plans and modifications for Palm Beach County families, including long-distance schedules.
Many West Palm Beach parenting cases involve distance. One parent stays in Palm Beach County while the other's work moves them to Broward or Miami-Dade, and a schedule designed for two homes ten minutes apart stops functioning. Long-distance plans need longer, less frequent blocks, clear transport responsibility and a holiday structure that does not depend on goodwill.
Modification is the other recurring theme. A plan entered when a child was in preschool rarely fits a middle schooler with travel sports and a part-time job. Florida allows modification on a substantial, material and unanticipated change in circumstances, plus a showing that the change serves the child's best interests, which is a higher bar than the original plan required.
Enforcement matters too. Where one parent withholds time, blocks information from the school or refuses exchanges, we go back to court rather than letting a pattern harden into an argument that the schedule has simply changed.
How Palm Beach County handles parenting cases
- West Palm Beach cases are heard in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, at the main judicial complex on North Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach.
- A written parenting plan is required, covering shared parental responsibility, the schedule, holidays and communication.
- The best-interest factors of section 61.13, Florida Statutes, govern, and a parenting course is required.
- Modification requires a substantial, material and unanticipated change in circumstances, not just a preference for a different schedule.
- Relocating a child 50 miles or more requires written agreement or a court order under section 61.13001.
West Palm Beach questions we hear
For the full statewide overview of this area of law, see our child custody page.