Family Law & Divorce in Miami, Florida: court movement, parenting schedule, and the first records worth locking down

Family cases for City of Miami residents are heard in the Family Division of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, centered at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center (175 NW 1st Ave.) downtown, with juvenile and dependency matters at the Children's Courthouse (155 NW 3rd St.) a short walk away. The city's family docket is defined by its people: Little Havana and Little Haiti households where spouses and children hold different immigration statuses; couples who married in Havana, Port-au-Prince, Bogota, or Caracas and now live in Allapattah or Flagami; and Brickell and Coconut Grove families whose wealth, closely held businesses, and offshore assets make the financial cases as complex as any in Florida. Florida is a no-fault divorce state: the petition need only allege the marriage is irretrievably broken, one spouse must have resided in Florida for six months before filing (Fla. Stat. §61.021), and a final judgment can issue as soon as 20 days after filing. The Eleventh Circuit runs a Self-Help Program for unrepresented parties and provides Spanish and Haitian Creole interpreters throughout its family courts — infrastructure the city's overwhelmingly bilingual population relies on daily.

Florida divides property by EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION under Fla. Stat. §61.075 — it is not a community-property state, a distinction that surprises spouses from Latin American and European civil-law systems that presume a community regime. Marital assets and debts acquired during the marriage are divided from a starting presumption of a 50/50 split, adjusted by statutory factors, while nonmarital property — premarital assets, gifts, and inheritances kept separate — stays with its owner unless commingling blurs the line. The city's cases add layers most Florida counties rarely see: a condo in Cartagena or an apartment in Madrid acquired during the marriage is a divisible marital asset even though a Florida court cannot re-title foreign land; a Miami River import-export business, a Brickell professional practice, or a Calle Ocho family restaurant requires forensic valuation; and the city's large cash-and-small-business economy makes proving true income the real battle. Judges here routinely impute income to a spouse whose lifestyle outruns a tax return, and prenuptial or foreign marital agreements signed abroad raise genuine enforceability fights that the local family bar litigates constantly.

Alimony was restructured in 2023: Senate Bill 1416 abolished permanent alimony for cases filed after July 1, 2023, leaving temporary, bridge-the-gap (up to 2 years), rehabilitative (up to 5 years, tied to a plan), and durational alimony, the last capped by marriage length and by amount (the lesser of the recipient's reasonable need or 35 percent of the difference in the parties' net incomes), with a structured path to modify or terminate at retirement age. Child support follows the income-shares model of Fla. Stat. §61.30, based on both parents' combined net income and the number of overnights each exercises, and the Florida Department of Revenue Child Support Program establishes and enforces support at no cost — including in interstate and international cases through income withholding, license suspension, tax-refund interception, and passport denial. In a city built on cash businesses, tips in the Brickell and downtown hospitality sector, and self-employment, the hard part of both alimony and child support is rarely the formula — it is establishing what a restaurant owner, a rideshare driver, or a self-employed contractor actually earns, which is where forensic accountants and imputation decide the case.

Parenting runs on "parental responsibility" and "time-sharing," and a 2023 statutory change created a rebuttable presumption that equal 50/50 time-sharing serves the child's best interests, applied through the factors of Fla. Stat. §61.13, with every case requiring a parenting plan. Relocating with a child more than 50 miles for 60 days or more requires the other parent's agreement or a court order under Fla. Stat. §61.13001 — and in the City of Miami that statute collides with international life constantly: a parent who wants to return to Venezuela or Haiti with the children needs a court order, not a plane ticket. INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION is a live risk in the city's cross-border families; the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction governs returns between member countries, but enforcement quality varies and several relevant countries are non-members, which is why prevention is the strategy. Eleventh Circuit judges routinely order passport surrender, enrollment in the U.S. State Department's Children's Passport Issuance Alert Program (CPIAP), travel bonds, and specific restrictions in the parenting plan when credible flight risk exists — and they expect those requests before travel is imminent, not after.

Domestic-violence protection is available to City of Miami residents regardless of immigration status. Injunctions for protection against domestic, repeat, dating, and sexual violence and stalking (Fla. Stat. §741.30, §784.046) are filed without a fee, reviewed the same day for a temporary ex parte order, and set for a final hearing within about 15 days, with the county's Coordinated Victims Assistance Center (CVAC, 2400 S. Dixie Hwy.; 305-285-5900) offering filing help, safety planning, and co-located advocates, and Florida's statewide hotline at 1-800-500-1119. Immigrant survivors in Little Havana, Little Haiti, and Allapattah should know that a batterer's threats to call immigration are a control tactic, not a legal barrier: VAWA self-petitions, U visas, and T visas exist precisely for abused spouses and crime victims, and Americans for Immigrant Justice (305-573-1106) and Catholic Legal Services (305-373-1073) handle these cases. For family law generally, Dade Legal Aid (305-579-5733) and Legal Services of Greater Miami (305-576-0080) represent qualifying residents, the Eleventh Circuit Self-Help Program supports pro se filers at the Lawson E. Thomas courthouse, and the Dade County Bar referral service (305-371-2220) — with the Cuban American Bar Association and Haitian Lawyers Association — connects families to counsel in their own language.