You are dating during your divorce in Florida. People who do not know you might say you’re terrible person. What are you thinking? Everybody’s going to talk about it. Scandal, scuttlebutt, national news, headlines. We need more attention on this issue. I’m being facetious, ladies and gentlemen. Please do not take that seriously. But that is the perception. The perception is that all marriages end because of infidelity. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do not have nationwide statistics to share. I only have personal and professional knowledge of this subject. Based upon my impression, a multitude of divorces occur because one party has been violent, one party has been verbally abusive (not just once but hundreds or thousands of times over a period of months or years), one party has become addicted to alcohol or drugs or gambling or something else that may be unsavory or damaging to the parties, or perhaps, two people no longer talk to each other. Emotional affairs are more common than sexual affairs during the course of a marriage but if two people are broken up and separated then who cares if somebody is dating somebody else? Well, they have children together, the two married people have children together. Can dating during divorce affect custody? Call Jacobs Law Firm at 407-335-8113 to speak with Attorney Jonathan Jacobs about your family law case.
Why would the other mom or dad start dating somebody else? Don’t they realize dating during divorce can affect custody and its impact on their children? The vast majority of experience that I have with this topic is that the parties have been separated for a substantial period of time before any of that occurs. Aa majority of people do not cram the new person down the children’s proverbial throats as their new step parent. That is less common. More common is the person is dating somebody and keeping them at arm’s length from their children, from their family unit. But of course, a divorce means tension, passion, inflamed passion. A divorce means that these people are probably already a powder keg of emotions. They are on red alert. Fire phasers, fire photon torpedoes. Let’s go get them.
Part of the fuel or the kerosene that’s doused over the campfire to keep it going and inflame tensions, part of this whole flamethrower effect is that people think that if they can prove the other side’s cheating, it gives them an advantage. Well, it sure gives them an advantage in casual conversation about who is “winning the divorce” according to public opinion.
Is dating during your divorce in Florida, sleeping with somebody, and your not even divorced yet, a form of cheating? Well, as in politics, when you are doing something that the general public finds distasteful, when they disapprove of your behavior and your actions, what do you do? Accuse the other side of the exact same thing. But I digress. You must consider that winning the war of public opinion does not generally win you the legal war in a Florida divorce. To the extent that you ever see a judge, if your entire argument is, “I should get a hundred percent of everything because that guy or that woman has cheated”, you are in for a rude awakening. Let’s create a distinction. If you were married, but separated and you are never getting back together, is the other party actually cheating? Are you simply upset your marriage ended, and now you are ascribing the failure of your marriage to a essentially post marital relationship? Can dating during divorce affect custody? A judge isn’t likely to be swayed by infidelity unless it involves wasting marital monies that must be returned through equitable distribution, or having the kids around somebody that may have a severe criminal record and may be harming the kids or threatening the kids or creating chaos in that family unit in a manner that is both provable, clear, obvious, and anybody from a reasonable person or reasonable parent’s perspective can figure out is detrimental to the best interest of those children, which isn’t just simply a factor of jealousy, it’s a factor of actual violence or danger or harm.
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