Court Opinion

ID: 9930648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-07 15:03:33.497714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:17:55.648855
License: Public Domain

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
                                  FOURTH DISTRICT

                         CHRISTOPHER PERSEO,
                               Appellant,

                                        v.

                             ERIN DONOFRIO,
                                 Appellee.

                              No. 4D2022-2706

                             [February 7, 2024]

   Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit,
Broward County; Michael Davis, Judge; L.T. Case No. FMCE16002638.

   Scott J. Brook of Scott J. Brook, P.A., Coral Springs, for appellant.

   No brief filed for appellee.

ARTAU, J.

   The father, Christopher Perseo, appeals from a final order granting the
mother, Erin Donofrio, judgment on the pleadings in this parental
timesharing modification proceeding. The father contends the trial court
committed reversible error in determining that the parties’ existing
parenting plan required him to meet the substantial, material, and
unanticipated change in circumstances burden generally applicable in
timesharing modification proceedings. We reverse the judgment on the
pleadings because the parenting plan’s agreed terms expressly set forth a
date certain after which timesharing with the minor child would be
reevaluated and could be modified without the father needing to meet the
change in circumstances burden otherwise applicable in timesharing
modification proceedings.

   The parties’ parenting plan set forth a series of timesharing schedules
under which the father would receive increased timesharing with the
minor child over a period of three years. The last in the series of milestone
dates set forth in the agreement provided:

      March 1, 2019: The parties will revisit the timesharing
      schedule without prejudice. No Supplemental Petition for
      Modification needs to be filed by either party. If the parties are
      unable to agree on a schedule at that time after attending
      formal mediation, the matter shall be submitted to the Court.

(Emphasis added).

   The father petitioned for modification of the existing timesharing
agreement following the parties’ unsuccessful attempt to agree on a
modified timesharing schedule pursuant to the terms of their existing
parenting plan. The father claimed in his petition that the mother “has
routinely thwarted [f]ather’s efforts to exercise timesharing” and the
parties’ unequal timesharing was no longer in the minor child’s best
interests. In response, the mother argued that changing the parties’
timesharing was not in the child’s best interests because the father waited
too long after the last milestone date specified in the existing parenting
plan to seek the requested change in timesharing.

    The trial court ultimately granted judgment on the pleadings in favor
of the mother. In support of its ruling, the trial court explained that, even
though “the parties’ agreed to modify the parenting plan in March of 2019,”
the father did not meet the burden of a substantial, material, and
unanticipated change in circumstances warranting modification of the
parties’ existing parenting plan.

   The father argues on appeal, as he did on rehearing in the trial court,
that the existing timesharing agreement, particularly the provision
establishing the March 2019 milestone date, gave him the right to seek
modification without proving the ordinarily required substantial, material,
and unanticipated change in circumstances necessary to support
modification. We agree.

   In Mooney v. Mooney, 729 So. 2d 1015, 1016 (Fla. 1st DCA 1999), a
mother appealed from an order granting a change in the minor child’s
primary custodial parent after the trial court determined that neither party
“bore [the] higher burden of proof” generally required for a modification of
custody. The First District affirmed the modification decision because the
parties’ custody agreement expressly indicated that “the minor child would
spend one week with the [father] and one week with the [mother] ‘until the
summer before the minor child begins kindergarten,’ when the
arrangement would be readdressed.” Id.

   In C.N. v. I.G.C., 316 So. 3d 287 (Fla. 2021), our supreme court
acknowledged its recognition in Wade v. Hirschman, 903 So. 2d 928 (Fla.
2005), that the First District’s Mooney decision stands for the proposition

                                      2
that “‘[t]he substantial change test applies unless the judgment otherwise
provides for the standard that should be applied when one party seeks a
modification.’” C.N., 316 So. 3d at 292 n.5 (quoting Wade, 903 So. 2d at
932 n.9).

   In Idelson v. Carmer, 330 So. 3d 81, 82-83 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021), the
parties agreed in their mediated parenting plan, by handwritten notation,
that the youngest child’s inclusion in their timesharing arrangement could
“be addressed by motion” any time after that child’s third birthday. On
appeal from the trial court’s subsequent determination that the parties’
youngest child should be included in the parenting plan, the Second
District concluded that the trial court “correctly observed that it need not
decide whether a substantial unanticipated change in circumstances had
occurred” for the child to be included in the existing parenting plan. Id.
at 82. In reaching this conclusion, the Second District noted that “the
precipitating event” contemplated by the parties’ existing parenting plan
“occurred.” Id. at 83.

   Likewise, in Greene v. Suhor, 783 So. 2d 290, 290-91 (Fla. 5th DCA
2001), the Fifth District determined that a father “was not required to meet
th[e] heavy burden of proof” normally applicable in timesharing
modification proceedings because the parties provided in their agreed
timesharing agreement that the minor child “would be with each parent
on alternating months until [the child] started kindergarten[,]” at which
time “residential custody would be with the mother.”

   Thus, the trial court erroneously concluded that the parties’ existing
parenting plan required him to meet the substantial, material, and
unanticipated change in circumstances burden generally applicable in
timesharing modification proceedings. We therefore reverse the judgment
on the pleadings and remand for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.

   Reversed and remanded with instructions.

KLINGENSMITH, C.J. and KUNTZ, J., concur.

                           *         *         *

    Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

                                     3