Source: https://www.floridabar.org/news/tfb-journal/?durl=/DIVCOM/JN/jnjournal01.nsf/cb53c80c8fabd49d85256b5900678f6c/C81D13CFE9B66AF585258056004C5E6A!opendocument
Timestamp: 2018-12-14 10:04:45
Document Index: 557463574

Matched Legal Cases: ['§61', '§1000', '§1002', '§1002', '§61', '§61', '§61', '§744']

Florida Bar Journal – Homeschooling and the Perils of Shared Parental Responsibility – The Florida Bar
When divided parents share decisionmaking, deadlock over homeschooling can occur all too easily. In light of that risk, an attorney advising a parent seeking home education will quickly realize the securest arrangement for the client will be to gain “sole parental responsibility” over the children, defined by F.S. §61.046(18) to mean “a court-ordered relationship in which one parent makes decisions regarding the minor child.” A parent with sole parental responsibility will have nearly carte blanche authority over the decision to homeschool, along with all other aspects of child-rearing. If the other parent wants a say in the education decision later, courts will be reluctant to change the status quo. For example, in Rust v. Rust, 864 S.W.2d 52 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1993), the Tennessee court refused to force a mother with sole custody to send her child to public school despite her ex-husband’s objection to home education.8 The court would “not second-guess” the mother’s homeschooling decision because the decree of sole custody gave her complete parental power on matters of education.9
For the lawyer advising a client interested in home education, perhaps the best option is to negotiate a parenting plan that expressly gives the homeschooling parent ultimate decision-making authority regarding education. This middle ground preserves most of the shared parental responsibility while fully protecting the decision to educate at home. After the 2008 changes to Florida’s family law statutes, this option is realistically attainable through a parenting plan that allocates the timesharing schedule to allow for homeschooling while maximizing the other parent’s time with the children. A court that accepts this arrangement will later be reluctant to change the status quo because the non-homeschooling parent has voluntarily yielded this authority. The parenting plan will be even stronger if it expressly mentions home education as an option for the minor children. Of course, the client may need to compromise on other issues to secure this type of favorable result.
1	Florida has three options. First, Florida provides a traditional home education model. See Fla. Stat. §§1000.21(5), 1002.01(1), and 1002.41. Second, groups of homeschooling parents may join together and operate as a private school. See Fla. Stat. §1002.01(2). Finally, parents may use Florida’s private tutor law, assuming they hold a valid Florida teaching certificate in the relevant subjects and grades. See Fla. Stat. §1002.43.
2	In nearly every culture, the legal right of parents went unchallenged for millennia, including in Britain, from which U.S. law originated. Sir William Blackstone, the authoritative 18th century English jurist, described the parental right as “universal,” and British common law saw it as a “sacred right with which courts would not interfere.” Daniel E. Witte, People v. Bennett: Analytic Approaches to Recognizing a Fundamental Parental Right Under the Ninth Amendment, 1996 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 183, 218 (1996).
3	This article sometimes references “sole custody” or “joint custody” under other state statutes. These terms, now obsolete in Florida parlance, refer to “sole parental responsibility” and “shared parental responsibility,” as a general matter. Changes to Fla. Stat. §61.13 in 2008 abolished the language of “custody” and replaced it with the concept of “timesharing” to be allocated in a parenting plan.
4	See Smith v. Smith, 971 So. 2d 191 (Fla. 1st DCA 2007).
5	Hancock, 915 So. 2d at 1278.
6	Id. at 1277-78.
7	Wyatt v. Wyatt, 966 So. 2d 455, 456 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007).
8	Rust, 864 S.W.2d at 54-56.
9	Id. Not every court will be as deferential to the decision to homeschool. See Clark v. Reiss, 831 S.W.2d 622 (Ark. Ct. App. 1992) (trumping the decision of a sole custodian because it was not in the best interests of the child).
10	The “best interests of the child” standard has emerged as a universal measuring rod across the nation. It has been adopted in Florida for “all matters relating to parenting and time-sharing of each minor child of the parties.” Fla. Stat. §61.13(2)(c).
11	The stereotypical bygone era of custody preferences for mothers was swept away by a national trend beginning in the 1970s. In Florida, a 1971 version of Fla. Stat. §61.13(2) theoretically abolished the “tender years doctrine” by decreeing that “the father of the child shall be given the same consideration as the mother in determining custody.” In 1997, the Florida Legislature did attempt to continue the old preference for mothers in the context of out-of-wedlock births, amending the law to weight decisions in favor of unwed mothers: “The mother of a child born out of wedlock is the natural guardian of the child and is entitled to primary residential care and custody of the child unless the court enters an order stating otherwise.” Fla. Stat. §744.301(1) (1997). Despite this statutory language, however, Florida courts have found that the family law’s broader mandate for “shared parental responsibility” applies even outside the marriage bonds, essentially superseding the 1997 amendment by expressing this preference for shared responsibility even where the parents never get married. See Stepp v. Stepp, 520 So. 2d 314 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988).
12	See Gerencser v. Mills, 4 So. 3d 22 (Fla. 5th DCA 2009).
13	Hancock, 915 So. 2d at 1278.
15	See Byers v. Byers, 910 So. 2d 336 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005) (a nonhomeschooling case where the appellate court placed emphasis on that fact).
16	Regarding imputed income, in Heidisch v. Heidisch, 992 So. 2d 835 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), the court remanded where the trial court had imputed income to a homeschooling mother who was receiving rehabilitative alimony so that she could finish her college degree. Id. at 836. The trial court had not sufficiently taken into account the fact that the mother was going to need to attend college full time and that she was going to “be the caretaker of her two children [50] percent of the time.” Id.
17	Regarding alimony, in Fortune v. Fortune, 61 So. 3d 441 (Fla. 2d DCA 2011), the court found error when the trial court did not award permanent alimony to a homeschooling mother of five who had been married for 18 years. Id. at 444. The couple had married young, and the mother had never worked outside the home during the marriage, where she homeschooled the children. Id. at 446-47. The court viewed this as “a classic permanent alimony case,” and it remanded for the trial court to award some permanent alimony to the wife. Id.
18	Welch, 951 So. 2d at 1019.
21	Wade, 903 So. 2d at 931, n. 2 (quoting Cooper v. Gress, 854 So. 2d 262, 265 (Fla. 1st DCA 2003)).
22	Smith, 927 So. 2d at 121.
24	Wyatt, 966 So. 2d 456.
25	Id. at 458.
26	Wigley, 82 So. 3d at 939.
27	For a representative example of the type of testimony available from such groups, see Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Brief of Amicus Curiae In Support of Appellant, Cano v. Cano, Case No. 3D13-1897 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013), available at http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/fl/Fla_3rd_appeals_brief_11-26-2013.pdf [hereinafter Cano Amicus Brief].
28	See Antony Barone Kolenc, When “I Do” Becomes “You Won’t!”: Preserving the Right to Homeschool After Divorce, 9 Ave Maria L. Rev. 263, 286-88 (2011).
29	See Cano Amicus Brief at 12-13.
30	Hancock, 915 So. 2d at 1278.
31	Carrano, 30 Conn. L. Rptr. at 479, 2001 WL 1267509.
32	Id. at *4.
33	Cano, 140 So. 3d at 651.
34	Id. See also Cano Amicus Brief at 3.
35	Cano, 140 So. 3d. at 652.
36	In the Matter of Martin Kurowski and Brenda (Kurowski) Voydatch [hereinafter Kurowski], Case No. 2006-M-669 (N.H. Laconia Family Division, Belknap County 2009) (Decree on Pending Motions, Jul. 14, 2009 at 7).
37	See Cano Amicus Brief at 3-9.
38	Returning to the Wigley case, the mother in hiding purposely kept her son “out of all community activities, sports, and even church to avoid detection by the father. He is allowed to have friends only when his mother or her present husband are around. Even his contact with family is very limited.” Wigley, 82 So. 3d at 942. Despite finding error, the appellate court did affirm the decision under the Hague Convention not to return the child to the custody of the father in St. Kitts because the child was in “grave risk of harm,” as defined in the Convention, due to threats by the father. Id. at 946.
39	Brown v. Brown, 686 N.E.2d 921 (Ind. Ct. App. 1997).
40	Eisele, 91 So. 3d at 874.
41	Final Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage, Case No. 07-1020-DR at 31-32 (Domestic Relations Division, 20th Judicial Circuit, Hendry County, Jan. 13, 2011).
42	Eisele, 91 So. 3d at 875.
43	Kurowski, Case No. 2006-M-669 at 7.
44	Id. at 4, 6.
46	Taylor v. Taylor, 2008 WL 2917650 at *7 (Mich. Ct. App. 2008).
47	Id. at *5.
48	Clark v. Reiss, 831 S.W.2d 622 (Ark. Ct. App. 1992).
49	Brown v. Brown, 518 S.E.2d 336 (Va. Ct. App. 1999).