FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL

STATE OF FLORIDA

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No. 1D17-2718

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BONNIE E. DANIELS,

Appellant,

v.

JUSTIN CAPARELLO,

Appellee.

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On appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County.

Kevin J. Carroll, Judge.

June 18, 2018

ON MOTION FOR CLARIFICATION, FOR REHEARING,

FOR REHEARING EN BANC, AND FOR CERTIFICATION

WETHERELL, J.

Appellant’s motions for rehearing, rehearing en banc, and 

certification are denied, but her motion for clarification is granted 

in part. The opinion issued on April 20, 2018, is withdrawn and 

the following opinion is substituted in its place.

Appellant, the mother, seeks review of a nonfinal order 

establishing the timesharing schedule for the parties’ child. We 

affirm for the reasons that follow.
2

In 2015, the parties entered into a mediated settlement 

agreement to resolve the paternity action filed by Appellee, the 

father, concerning the parties’ then two-year-old child. The 

agreement—which was “ratified, confirmed, and approved” in the

final judgment entered by the court in the paternity action—

provided for shared parental responsibility and established a

timesharing schedule for the father that gradually increased to 

“50-50/equal time sharing . . . beginning June 1, 2017, and 

thereafter.” The agreement did not specify how the 50-50 

timesharing would be structured, but rather provided that the 

parties would mediate that issue in early 2017 if they were 

unable to agree on a schedule.

In May 2017, after an unsuccessful mediation, the father 

filed a motion to enforce the 50-50 timesharing requirement in 

the mediated settlement agreement and to establish a schedule 

for the 50-50 timesharing. At the hearing on the motion, the 

judge stated his intent to order a “default week-on, week-off”

timesharing schedule, but before that ruling was memorialized in 

a written order, the parties stipulated to a different schedule. 

The order entered by the trial court adopted the schedule 

stipulated to by the parties.

In seeking to reverse the trial court’s order, the mother 

essentially raises three arguments. We find each argument to be 

without merit.

First, we summarily reject the mother’s argument that the 

trial court erred in ordering 50-50 timesharing effective June 1, 

2017, because as the trial court found, the clear and 

unambiguous language of the mediated settlement agreement 

provides for 50-50 timesharing from that date forward. By its 

terms, the only issue the agreement left open for subsequent 

litigation was “how that 50-50 parenting time schedule should be 

structured.”

Second, with respect to the specific timesharing schedule 

established by the trial court, we agree with the father that the 

mother invited any error and cannot challenge that schedule on 

appeal because she stipulated to it. See Mohammad v. 

Mohammad, 371 So. 2d 1070, 1071 (Fla. 1st DCA 1979); Duffy v. 
3

Duffy, 247 So. 2d 493, 493 (Fla. 2d DCA 1971); Shenk v. Shenk, 

126 So. 2d 286 (Fla. 3d DCA 1961). 

Finally, we reject the mother’s argument that the trial court 

erred by not expressly finding that the stipulated-to timesharing 

schedule was in the child’s best interest. This argument was not 

preserved for appellate review because the mother never 

presented it to the trial court for a ruling. See Hentze v. Denys,

88 So. 3d 307, 311 (Fla. 1st DCA 2012); LaCoste v. LaCoste, 58 

So. 3d 404, 405 (Fla. 1st DCA 2011); Owens v. Owens, 973 So. 2d 

1169 (Fla. 1st DCA 2007). We recognize that the mother argued 

at the hearing that “[t]here’s a plethora of potential 50/50 

schedules out there [a]nd the Court has to determine which of 

those schedules is in the best interest of the child.” However, 

after the trial court entered the order adopting the timesharing 

schedule stipulated to by the parties post-hearing, the mother did 

not file a motion for reconsideration or otherwise apprise the trial 

court that it still needed to find the stipulated-to schedule to be in 

the child’s best interest. Moreover, because the mother does not 

argue on appeal that the specific schedule established by the trial 

court (which she agreed to) is not in the child’s best interest,1 we 

decline to hold that the trial court’s failure to make a best 

interest finding is fundamental error in this case.

Accordingly, we affirm the order establishing the 50-50 

timesharing schedule for the parties’ child.

AFFIRMED.

WOLF and ROBERTS, JJ., concur.

 1 We did not overlook the mother’s argument that 50-50 

timesharing in general is not in the child’s best interest, but that 

argument is foreclosed in this proceeding by the finding in the 

final judgment in the paternity action that the mediated 

settlement agreement requiring 50-50 timesharing effective June 

1, 2017, “promotes the minor child’s best interests.” Thus, any 

challenge to the 50-50 timesharing established by the mediated 

settlement agreement and implemented in the order affirmed in 

this appeal will need to be pursued in a separate modification 

proceeding.
4

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Jerry L. Rumph, Jr. of Sweeting & Rumph, P.A., Tallahassee, for 

Appellant.

Robert A. McNeely of Messer Caparello, P.A., Tallahassee, for 

Appellee.