Your parenting plan says exchanges happen at 6 p.m. on Friday, but for the third month running your co-parent arrives an hour late, cancels at the last minute or decides your weekend does not work. You are frustrated, your children are confused and you cannot tell whether this is a legal problem or simply a difficult person. Florida gives you several options, and the right one depends on what is actually going wrong.
Spotting a pattern of parenting plan violations
A parenting plan is a court order rather than a suggestion, although not every missed exchange amounts to a violation. A sick child, a hurricane evacuation or a genuine work emergency can be proper cause for an adjustment. What matters is the pattern.
Florida law focuses on a parent who denies time-sharing, meaning your scheduled parenting time, without proper cause. Repeated denials, blocked phone calls, unilateral schedule changes or exclusion from school and medical records usually establish that pattern. One difficult weekend is a conversation; six months of them is a case.
Keeping a clear record of what happened
Judges decide these disputes on evidence rather than impressions. Keep a simple log with the date, what the plan required, what actually happened and how much time you lost with your children. Save texts, emails and co-parenting app messages exactly as they arrive, and keep your own messages calm and factual, because the other side may read them aloud in court. Neutral proof such as school pickup records carries more weight than your recollection of the evening.
Using court enforcement for repeated violations
Repeated violations are a court matter. Enforcement starts with a sworn motion filed in your existing case, often on the statewide civil contempt form, and a post-judgment enforcement action asks the judge to enforce an order already in place.
If the court finds your time-sharing was denied without proper cause, it must award makeup time at the noncompliant parent’s expense. It may also order attorney’s fees, a parenting course, community service or other sanctions, and it may treat willful violations as contempt of court.
Changing a parenting plan that no longer works
Enforcement addresses past violations, but it does not repair a schedule that no longer matches your family’s circumstances. Modification is a separate request requiring a substantial and material change in circumstances plus a determination that the change serves your children’s best interests. Since 2023, Florida law no longer requires you to prove that you could not have anticipated the change. A judge may also modify the plan at the request of the parent who followed it. Relocation carries its own notice rules.
Choosing the response that fits the problem
A single missed weekend usually calls for a written request to make it up, a repeated pattern calls for enforcement and a schedule that has stopped working calls for modification. None of these situations calls for self-help.
Withholding child support because you lost time, or withholding time because support is late, places you on the wrong side of the same statute. Start by writing down everything from the past several months. That record tells you whether you have a scheduling problem or a court problem, and it is the first thing a judge will want to see.