Q: Until a week ago, I lived with a man in Coral Springs for seven years, although we never married. We own a home together, own a bank account together, jointly own two cars, and chipped in to buy furniture. Most importantly, we have a son, five years old.
He announced he was moving out a week before he moved. During that week, we agreed on a division of the furniture and cars. He wants to sell the house, and I want to keep it. He thinks he ought to get more than half of the house money, if we sell, or if one buys out the other, because he says he put up the down payment, and makes the mortgage payments.
I told him that the house should be half-and-half because that’s the way the title is held, and while he made the mortgage payments, I spent my whole check on running the house, paying the car payments and most other bills.
We could not agree on the amount that he was to pay me in child support, or the time-sharing of our son. He and I are both from a state which still recognizes common law marriage. After he left, I found out, on the Internet, that Florida does not have common law marriage. How do we get out of this mess?
A: Florida law provides legal remedies, which gives our circuit courts the jurisdiction (power) to resolve the issues that you have described. Any divorce attorney can help you through the process, even though it would not, technically, be a divorce case, because you are not married.
To establish the correct amount of child support and child raising responsibility and access, the help of family law and child support lawyers will be necessary to file a paternity lawsuit against the child’s father. Look for a child custody lawyer that has the experience and expertise needed for your case. Even though you have indicated that there was never a doubt as to the identity of the father, and even if your friend was listed on the birth certificate as the child’s father, the paternity suit is required to confirm his legal responsibility as the father.
The judge in the paternity suit will be able enter a final judgment establishing your former friend as the legal father, and set child support according to the Florida child support guidelines statute usually used in divorce cases.
The judge will also be able to design a parenting plan, providing for “visitation”, now usually called access to your child, if the two of you cannot agree upon a plan, just as if the two of you had married. The judge will, as in divorce cases, retain jurisdiction over the two of you and your child for purposes of enforcement of his or her ruling and modification of support and access issues until the child becomes an adult.
A second count can be added to your lawsuit for partition (division) of the home you own together. There is a presumption that the proceeds from the sale of the house be divided equally, because you both hold the title. The judge, however, can under very narrow circumstances decide that the proceeds of the sale of the house be divided unequally, based upon past agreements between you, and your individual contributions to the purchase and upkeep of the home through the years.
If the two of you cannot agree on selling the house to one or the other, and cannot agree how to market the house to strangers, the judge can order the house sold at the courthouse steps, at auction. After the judge rules on the division of the equity it would probably be better to agree on a normal sales plan than to allow the auction to go forward.
Michael H. Gora has been certified by the Board of Specialization of The Florida Bar as a specialist in family and matrimonial law, and is a partner with Shapiro Blasi Wasserman & Gora P.A. in Boca Raton. Mr. Gora can be reached at mhgora@sbwlawfirm.com.