Modifying a Florida Custody or Support Order

The standard you have to meet

Courts do not reopen final judgments lightly. For most modifications, the moving party must show a change in circumstances that is substantial and material, and that the requested change serves the child’s best interest or is otherwise justified.

For time-sharing specifically, the 2023 legislation removed the long-standing requirement that the change also be unanticipated. That lowered the bar meaningfully. A change that both parents could have foreseen at the time of the original order may now support modification, where previously it would not have.

What still will not work: dissatisfaction with the original deal, a single bad month, or a change you created yourself in order to justify the request.

Changes that commonly support modification

• Income. A significant, involuntary, and continuing change in either parent’s earnings, such as a layoff, a disability, or a substantial raise.
• Relocation. A move that makes the existing schedule unworkable. Moves over 50 miles have their own statutory procedure.
• The child’s needs. A new medical, educational, or developmental need, or simply a schedule built for a toddler that no longer fits a teenager.
• A parent’s circumstances. A new work schedule, remarriage, incarceration, substance abuse, or a serious mental health development.
• Persistent non-compliance. A parent who repeatedly violates the parenting plan can find the schedule itself modified.

Support modification: file, do not self-adjust

When income drops, the instinct is to start paying what is affordable rather than what the order requires. Florida does not work that way. Child support can generally be modified only back to the date the petition is filed, so every month before filing accrues arrears at the old rate. Those arrears are a judgment, and they survive both bankruptcy and any later agreement between the parents.

The same logic applies in reverse. If the other parent’s income has risen substantially, support does not adjust on its own. Someone has to ask.

Alimony modification

Durational and rehabilitative alimony may be modified on a substantial, material, involuntary, and permanent change in circumstances. Bridge-the-gap alimony cannot be modified. Support also terminates on remarriage or death, and may be reduced or ended where the recipient is in a supportive relationship.

Note the word involuntary. A payer who takes a lower-paying job by choice, or retires early without a legitimate basis, will generally have income imputed at the prior level.

Agreements still need a judge

Parents frequently reach a new arrangement informally and simply start following it. Years later, one of them enforces the old written order, and the informal deal, however long it lasted, may not protect the other.

If you agree on a change, put it in writing and have the court enter it. An agreed modification is inexpensive and takes little time. Reconstructing an undocumented arrangement after a dispute is neither.