§ / 01
Marital vs. non-marital — the sorting
Florida’s equitable distribution statute begins with classification. Marital property is generally everything acquired or earned during the marriage, by either spouse, regardless of title — along with debts incurred during the marriage. Non-marital property includes what each spouse brought in, plus gifts and inheritances received individually. The cut-off for classification is typically the date the petition is filed. Classification is where most property fights actually live, because an asset’s label decides whether it is on the table at all.
§ / 02
Commingling — how separate money stops being separate
Non-marital property keeps its character only if it is kept separate. Deposit an inheritance into the joint account that pays the mortgage, and it can lose its identity. Retitle a premarital home into both names, and Florida presumes a gift to the marriage. And when marital labor or marital funds enhance a non-marital asset — a spouse working in the premarital business, joint money renovating the premarital house — the appreciation attributable to that effort becomes marital. Tracing these threads is meticulous work, and it routinely moves six figures from one column to the other.
§ / 03
Valuing what you own
Classification answers whose; valuation answers how much. Homes get appraisals, not Zillow screenshots. Retirement accounts get statements and, where needed, present-value analysis. Businesses are the hard case: Florida values a company at fair market value and excludes the personal goodwill that walks out the door with its owner — a distinction that can swing a valuation dramatically and usually calls for a credentialed valuation expert. The court also has flexibility on valuation dates, choosing the date that is equitable for each asset.
§ / 04
Dissipation and waste
Equitable distribution starts from the premise that marital assets should be split equally — but the statute lists grounds for an unequal award, and intentional waste is a big one. Money spent on an affair, a gambling run, or a spite-driven liquidation after the marriage broke down can be charged back against the spender’s share, as though the money were still there. Proving dissipation is a documents game, which is one more reason the disclosure phase matters so much.
§ / 05
Alimony after the 2023 reform
Florida rewrote alimony in 2023, and the changes are structural. Permanent alimony is gone. What remains: temporary support during the case; bridge-the-gap alimony of up to two years for the transition to single life; rehabilitative alimony of up to five years tied to a concrete plan for education or retraining; and durational alimony, unavailable for marriages under three years and capped in length at a percentage of the marriage’s duration — and in amount at the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need or thirty-five percent of the difference in the spouses’ net incomes. Alimony is now an exercise in arithmetic and evidence, not open-ended argument.
§ / 06
Child support — the guidelines
Child support in Florida is formula-driven. The guidelines combine both parents’ net monthly incomes, allocate the statutory support amount between them proportionally, and adjust for health insurance premiums, childcare costs, and the timesharing schedule — once a parent has at least twenty percent of the overnights, a substantial-timesharing formula recalibrates the numbers. Where a parent is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, courts impute income based on earning capacity. The formula is rigid; the inputs are where the advocacy happens.
The Steady Hand
Numbers argued from documents beat numbers argued from memory — every time. We build the equitable distribution spreadsheet early, source every line, and walk into mediation with the math already done.