A.D. v. K.S.
A.D. v. K.S.
Opinion of the Court
A.D., the birth father of S.D., petitions this court for a writ of prohibition, or in the alternative a writ of certiorari, and requests that we quash a portion of the trial court’s order modifying custody to the father. Specifically, he objects to the portion of the order that gives the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office discretion to permit the maternal grandmother and the maternal great-grandmother to have unsupervised visitation with the minor child. We treat the petition for writ of prohibition as a petition for writ of certiorari. See Belair v. Drew, 770 So.2d 1164 (Fla. 2000); T.M.M. v. H.M.C., 788 So.2d 1114 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001). We grant the petition and
The attachments to the petition show that the child was removed from the mother’s custody and placed in the temporary custody of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) following allegations of present and prospective abuse and neglect. DCF filed an amended petition for dependency against the mother and also filed a petition for termination of the mother’s parental rights. DCF denied placement of the child with the maternal grandmother and great-grandmother and filed a motion to modify placement to the father. After a hearing, the trial court entered an order giving custody of the child to the father and abating his current child support obligation. This is the order under review. In the order, the trial court found that it was “appropriate to grant Pinellas County Sheriffs Office the discretion to permit the maternal grandmother and/or the maternal great-grandmother unsupervised visitation.”
In AS. v. Biddle, 829 So.2d 1004 (Fla. 2d DCA 2002), we granted A.S.’s petition for writ of prohibition
In this case, the trial court granted DCF’s motion to modify placement to the father and awarded custody of the child to the father, a non-offending parent. In granting the sheriffs office the authority to allow the maternal grandmother and the maternal great-grandmother to have unsupervised visitation with the child, the trial court was, in essence, ordering the father to provide visitation with the child to the maternal relatives should the sheriffs office determine such visitation appropriate. As in AS., the trial court in this case could not legally order the father to provide visitation to the maternal relatives. Generally, a grandparent is entitled to reasonable visitation with a grandchild who has been adjudicated dependent and taken from the physical custody of the parent. § 39.509, Fla. Stat. (2002). Here, however, the child was never adjudicated dependent as to the father,
The Florida Supreme Court recently declared section 61.13(2)(b)(2)(c), Florida Statutes (2001), unconstitutional as viola-tive of the constitutional right of privacy as
Accordingly, we grant the petition for writ of certiorari, quash those portions of the trial court order that grant the sheriffs office discretion to permit unsupervised visitation with the maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, and remand to the trial court to strike those provisions from the order giving custody to the father.
. In T.M.M., this court treated the appeal of a nonfinal order as a petition for writ of certio-rari. We granted the petition and quashed the order of the trial court that required the custodial parent to, among other things, provide visitation with the children to the paternal aunt. In doing so, this court stated:
We have also considered treating this appeal as a petition for writ of prohibition because the trial court's jurisdictional power is questionable. Although it is arguable that either approach would provide us with appellate jurisdiction, we conclude that the best approach is to treat this appeal as a petition for writ of certiorari. See Belair v. Drew, 770 So.2d 1164 (Fla. 2000) (certiorari review of temporary order awarding visitation rights to grandmother).
. At the time of the filing of the petition, the child had not been adjudicated dependent as to the mother.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- In the Interest of S.D., a/k/a S.S., a child A.D. v. K.S., and Department of Children and Family Services
- Cited By
- 2 cases
- Status
- Published