Most couples who decide to divorce without attorneys have already had the conversation. You've agreed it's over. You've agreed to be reasonable. You've probably agreed on the big obvious things — she keeps her car, he keeps his, neither of you wants a fight.​ And then you sit down with the paperwork and discover the divorce isn't made of big obvious things. It's made of about sixty small ones, and you haven't discussed most of them.

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This page is that list.

 

Read it together. The goal isn't to alarm you — it's to make sure the agreement you sign is one that still works in three years, when one of you has moved, or remarried, or the youngest has started high school.

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The decisions about your children

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Florida requires a Parenting Plan in every case involving minor children. Not a summary of your intentions — an actual document that a judge could enforce and a stranger could follow.

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Where the children sleep, and when. Florida law now starts from a presumption that equal time-sharing is in a child's best interest, but the schedule still has to be written out. Which nights, whose week, what time the handoff happens, and where.

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The holidays. Every one of them, every year. Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve versus Christmas Day, spring break, Mother's Day and Father's Day, each child's birthday, each parent's birthday. Couples routinely write "we'll alternate holidays" and then spend the next decade arguing about which year is whose.

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Summer. School-year schedules break down in June. Does the schedule change entirely? Does each parent get uninterrupted weeks, and how many, and who picks first?

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Who drives. Exchange location, exchange time, and what happens when someone is late. This is the single most common source of post-divorce conflict, and it's usually the least discussed.

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Who decides. Education, non-emergency medical care, religion, extracurriculars, counseling. Shared decision-making sounds obvious until you disagree about a school district or a therapist.

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How you communicate. Text, email, or a co-parenting app. What's the expected response time. What information gets shared automatically — grades, doctor visits, travel plans.

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What happens if one of you wants to move. Florida has a specific relocation statute with a distance threshold and a formal process. Whether your agreement addresses it in advance matters.

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Travel. Out-of-state trips, out-of-country trips, passports, notice requirements.

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​​The decisions about money moving between you

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Child support. This is not fully yours to decide. Florida uses statutory guidelines based on both incomes, the overnight split, health insurance costs, and childcare. You can agree to a number, but the court reviews it against the guideline and expects an explanation for a meaningful departure. Waiving child support entirely is generally not something a court will approve.

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Who carries health insurance, what it costs, and how uncovered medical expenses get divided. "We'll split it" needs a percentage and a deadline for reimbursement.

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Childcare, activities, and the extras. Daycare, braces, sports fees, band, tutoring, the class trip. Are these inside child support or split separately? Does one parent get a veto on a cost the other commits to?

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College. Florida courts generally will not order a parent to pay for college, which means if you want it addressed, it has to be your agreement, written now.

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Alimony. Whether either of you will pay support, how much, for how long, and on what terms it ends. Florida's alimony law changed significantly in 2023, and the types and durations available now are narrower than what you may have heard from someone who divorced ten years ago.

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Whether support is secured. Life insurance naming the other parent as beneficiary is common where support is being paid, and rarely thought of by couples on their own.

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The decisions about what you own

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The house. This is the one that undoes more agreements than anything else. Deciding "she keeps the house" isn't a decision — it's the beginning of one. Who stays and for how long. Whether it's sold now, at a set date, or when the youngest graduates. Who pays the mortgage, taxes, insurance, and repairs in the meantime. How the equity is calculated and split. And critically: a quitclaim deed does not remove anyone from the mortgage. Only a refinance does. If one of you keeps the house without refinancing, the other stays legally on that debt.

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Retirement accounts. 401(k)s, pensions, IRAs, TSP, FRS. Splitting a qualified plan generally requires a separate court order beyond your divorce judgment, and the process is different for each plan type. Couples who "agree to split the retirement" and never execute the order find out years later that nothing happened.

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Military benefits, if either of you served. Retirement division, the 10/10 rule, Survivor Benefit Plan election, and TRICARE eligibility all have their own rules and their own deadlines.

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Vehicles, boats, trailers, and who is on the title versus who is on the loan.

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Bank and investment accounts. Balances as of what date, and what happens to money spent between separating and finalizing.

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Debt. Credit cards, personal loans, medical bills, tax liability, the car notes. An agreement that one of you will pay a debt does not release the other from it if both names are on the account. Your creditors are not parties to your divorce.

 

The things without a price tag. Furniture, tools, the dog, family photographs, holiday decorations. These sound trivial and are not. Divide them now, on paper.

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The decisions about what happens next

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Taxes. Filing status for this year. Who claims which child, in which years. What happens to a refund or a liability from a jointly filed return.

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Beneficiaries. Life insurance, retirement accounts, and payable-on-death designations do not update themselves when your divorce is final.

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Estate documents. Wills, powers of attorney, healthcare surrogates.

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Name restoration, if either of you wants it. It's straightforward at the time of the divorce and considerably more work afterward.

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How you'll change this later. Circumstances shift. Does your agreement say what happens when a job is lost, a schedule changes, or someone remarries?

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What all of this becomes

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Two documents: a Marital Settlement Agreement and, if you have children, a Parenting Plan. Everything above lands in one or the other. Once those two documents are complete and signed, the rest of your divorce is administrative — filing, a financial affidavit, the parenting course if you have minor children, and a brief final hearing.

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The hard part is not the filing. The hard part is the two of you sitting across a table and working through eight pages of decisions, some of which you disagree about and don't know it yet.

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Where I come in

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I'm a Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator. My work is the conversation itself: sitting with both of you, walking through every decision on this list, and drafting the Marital Settlement Agreement and Parenting Plan that come out of it.

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I don't represent either of you, and I don't take sides. I don't complete your court forms — once your agreement and parenting plan are done, the filing is a set of straightforward steps you're fully capable of handling yourselves.

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If you've read this list and realized there's more to talk about than you thought, that's exactly the right moment to call.

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This page is general information about the Florida divorce process, not legal advice. I am a mediator, not an attorney, and I do not represent either spouse.