A judge’s decision about your child can feel like the end of the conversation. The order is signed, the terms are set, and you’re expected to live with it. But Florida law asks something specific of judges before they change a parenting plan — and when those requirements are skipped, the order can be reversed.
That’s what happened in Edwards v. Williams, decided by Florida’s Sixth District Court of Appeal on December 23, 2025. A mother appealed an order that gave her child’s father final say over education and medical decisions. The appellate court didn’t rule on whether that change was right or wrong. It reversed because the trial court’s order was missing findings the statute requires.
If you’re a parent working through a custody dispute, or you’re looking for a Tampa divorce lawyer because your co-parent has filed to change your existing arrangement, this case is worth understanding. It illustrates a principle that protects both parents: a court can’t rearrange your parenting plan without explaining, in the order itself, why the legal standard was met.
Below, we walk through what happened, what the court decided, an important change in Florida law that affects how this applies to your case today, and what it all means practically.
The Case at a Glance: Edwards v. Williams
Jennifer Edwards and Jeremy Williams shared a minor child and had an existing parenting plan entered in August 2021. It was a long-distance parenting plan, meaning the parents lived far enough apart that the schedule was built around travel, extended blocks of time, and school-year logistics rather than a week-to-week rotation.
At some point afterward, the father filed a supplemental petition to modify the parenting plan — the standard way a Florida parent asks a court to change an existing arrangement.
The trial court held a hearing and entered a supplemental final judgment that modified the 2021 plan. Specifically, it awarded shared parental responsibility with the father having ultimate decision-making authority on issues related to the child’s education and medical care.
The mother filed a motion for rehearing. Her argument, among others, was that the trial court hadn’t made the findings required by section 61.13(3) of the Florida Statutes.
The trial court granted that motion in part. But rather than adding the missing findings, it entered an Amended Supplemental Final Judgment that added a paragraph explaining it was declining to address the statutory factorsbecause doing so wasn’t in the child’s best interest. The rest of the rehearing motion was denied.
The mother appealed. The father didn’t file an answer brief or otherwise participate in the appeal.
Two Terms Worth Understanding First
Before getting to the ruling, two pieces of vocabulary come up constantly in Tampa family law cases and are worth defining plainly.
Shared parental responsibility means both parents retain full parental rights and are expected to confer with each other and make major decisions about the child jointly — school, medical care, religious upbringing, and similar issues. It’s the default arrangement in Florida.
Ultimate decision-making authority is a modification of that default. Both parents still confer, but if they can’t agree, one parent gets the final call on specified categories of decisions. It’s not full sole parental responsibility, but it is a real shift in power. A parent with ultimate authority over education, for example, can effectively decide where the child goes to school when the parents deadlock.
That’s why the change in Edwards mattered. Handing one parent final say over education and medical care isn’t a housekeeping adjustment. It’s a meaningful reallocation of a parent’s role in their child’s life — which is exactly why the statute puts requirements in front of it.
The Standard for Modifying a Parenting Plan in Florida
Here is the language at the center of the case, from the version of section 61.13(3) that applied:
A determination of parental responsibility, a parenting plan, or a time-sharing schedule may not be modified without a showing of a substantial, material, and unanticipated change in circumstances and a determination that the modification is in the best interests of the child.
The statute then goes on to say that the best-interest determination is made by evaluating all of the factors affecting the welfare of that particular child and that family — and it lists a long series of enumerated factors, running from (a) all the way through (t).
Two things stand out.
First, this is a two-part test. A change in circumstances isn’t enough on its own, and neither is a conclusion that the change would be good for the child. Both have to be established, and the change-in-circumstances question comes first.
Second, the change has to clear three separate adjectives. Substantial. Material. And — under the version of the statute in this case — unanticipated. Those aren’t decorative words. Florida appellate courts treat them as distinct requirements, and a finding that addresses one doesn’t automatically cover the others.
Florida courts have consistently held that the failure to include the required finding of a substantial, material, and unanticipated change in circumstances will typically require reversal of a parenting plan modification. Notably for Tampa readers, one of the decisions the Sixth District relied on for that proposition — Romeo v. Romeo — comes from the Second District Court of Appeal, the appellate court that reviews family law decisions from Hillsborough County.
Important: Florida Law Changed in 2023
This deserves its own section, because it’s the piece most likely to cause confusion if you’re reading this while dealing with your own case.
The court applied the 2022 version of section 61.13(3), because that was the law governing this dispute. The opinion notes in a footnote that section 61.13 was substantially revised effective July 1, 2023, and the revised statute no longer includes the requirement that the change be “unanticipated.”
That’s a significant shift. Under the older standard, a parent seeking modification could lose simply because the change they pointed to was foreseeable at the time of the original judgment — even if it was real and significant. The removal of “unanticipated” lowered that hurdle.
So if you’re evaluating a modification question today, the framework you’re generally working with is a substantial and material change in circumstances, plus a determination that modification serves the child’s best interests. The “unanticipated” element that decided part of Edwards reflects the older version of the law.
Does that make the case irrelevant? Not at all. The core lesson survives the amendment entirely: whatever the statutory elements are, the trial court’s order has to actually contain findings addressing them. The specific list changed. The requirement that a judge make and articulate findings did not.
Which version of the statute applies to your situation depends on the timing of your case, and that’s genuinely a question for a Florida divorce attorney rather than a blog post. If your modification proceeding is recent, you’re almost certainly under the current standard.
What the Sixth District Court of Appeal Decided
The appellate court reviewed the question of whether required statutory findings were considered and included using de novo review — meaning it looked at the issue fresh, without deferring to the trial court’s conclusion. That’s the standard for this kind of legal question, as opposed to the more deferential review appellate courts give to a trial judge’s assessment of witnesses and evidence.
The problem the court identified was narrow and specific.
The Amended Supplemental Final Judgment stated that the father met his burden to prove a substantial change in circumstances, and that modifying the long-distance parenting plan was in the child’s best interest. But the statute required a substantial, material, and unanticipated change. The order contained no finding that the change was material or unanticipated.
One finding out of three isn’t enough when the statute lists three.
The court also addressed a question that occurs to a lot of people reading appellate decisions for the first time: if the record might support those findings anyway, why doesn’t the appellate court just make them and move on?
The answer is structural. As the court put it, an appellate court is not in a position to make that initial determination. Appellate judges review records; they don’t sit as fact-finders in the first instance. They weren’t in the courtroom, didn’t hear the testimony, and didn’t assess anyone’s credibility. Making factual findings from a cold transcript would substitute the appellate court’s judgment for the trial judge’s on exactly the questions trial judges exist to answer.
So the court reversed and remanded with instructions for the trial court to make appropriate findings of fact. It also gave the trial judge a practical instruction: on remand, determine whether the existing record contains enough evidence to resolve the issue, or whether further proceedings are necessary. As to every other ground the mother raised, the court affirmed.
What a Reversal Like This Actually Means
It’s worth being clear about what the mother did and didn’t win, because this is where expectations often outrun reality.
She did not win a ruling that the father shouldn’t have ultimate decision-making authority. The appellate court expressed no view on that. The case went back to the same trial judge, who may review the same record and enter a new order reaching the same result — this time with findings that address each statutory element.
What she won was the right to a decision made under the correct legal standard and explained on paper. That may sound like a technicality. It isn’t, for two reasons.
First, the discipline of writing findings changes outcomes. A judge who has to articulate specifically why a change was material and unanticipated sometimes discovers the evidence doesn’t support it. The requirement isn’t just paperwork; it’s a check on the analysis.
Second, findings are what make meaningful appellate review possible at all. Without them, a reviewing court has no way to tell whether the judge applied the right test or simply reached a result that felt right. Requiring findings is how the system stays reviewable.
There’s also a small procedural detail worth noticing: the mother raised the missing-findings problem in a motion for rehearing before appealing. In Florida family law cases, that’s frequently the right move when an order omits required findings, and it can matter for preserving the issue. If your order comes out and something the law requires appears to be missing, the window to raise it with the trial judge is short.
Does a Sixth District Case Apply in Hillsborough County?
A fair question. Edwards came out of Charlotte County and was decided by the Sixth District Court of Appeal. Appeals from Hillsborough County circuit courts go to the Second District Court of Appeal, so a Sixth District decision isn’t binding on a Tampa judge the way a Second District decision would be.
But the rule at issue isn’t a regional quirk. It comes from a Florida statute — section 61.13(3) — that applies to every circuit court in the state. And as noted above, the Sixth District’s reasoning drew on Romeo v. Romeo, a Second District case holding the same thing. The requirement that modification orders contain the statute’s findings is well established across Florida’s appellate districts.
For a parent in a Hillsborough County parenting plan dispute, the practical guidance is the same regardless of which district decided the case.
Practical Takeaways for Florida Parents
Modification is a real legal standard, not a do-over
Parents sometimes assume that if circumstances have shifted, a judge will simply revisit the arrangement. Florida law is more demanding. The parent asking for the change has to plead and prove a substantial and material change in circumstances and that the modification serves the child’s best interests. Disagreeing with the original ruling isn’t grounds for changing it.
Read your order after the hearing, not just the outcome
The problem in Edwards wasn’t visible in the result. It was visible in what the written order left out. Sit down with your attorney and go through the order line by line. Does it address each element the law requires? If not, say so promptly.
A rehearing motion is often the first step, not the appeal
The mother here filed for rehearing before going up. That gives the trial judge the chance to fix the problem directly, which is faster and far less expensive than an appeal. Deadlines are short, so this isn’t something to think about for a few weeks.
Understand what “ultimate decision-making authority” would mean day to day
If ultimate authority over education or medical care is on the table in your case, think concretely about what that looks like in practice — who chooses the pediatrician, who enrolls the child, what happens when you disagree. These arrangements sound abstract in a courtroom and become very concrete afterward.
Know which version of the statute governs your case
Florida amended section 61.13 effective July 1, 2023, removing the “unanticipated” requirement. Older cases you find online may describe a standard that no longer applies. A Tampa divorce lawyer can tell you which framework governs your situation.
The other side’s silence doesn’t decide the appeal
The father didn’t file an answer brief and didn’t participate. The appellate court still reviewed the trial court’s order on the merits. A non-response isn’t a forfeit, in either direction.
Expect the timeline to be longer than you’d like
The parenting plan in this case dated to August 2021. The appellate decision came in December 2025 — and sent the case back to the trial court for more work. Not every case moves this slowly, but post-judgment litigation runs on its own clock, and it’s better to know that going in than to discover it midway through.
Talk to a Tampa Divorce Lawyer at The McKinney Law Group
Fighting over a parenting plan is exhausting in a way that has nothing to do with legal complexity. It’s your child’s school, your child’s doctor, and your role in decisions you never imagined having to litigate. You deserve to understand what the law actually requires and where you realistically stand.
At The McKinney Law Group, we help parents across Hillsborough County and the Tampa Bay area with parenting plan modifications, time-sharing disputes, and decision-making authority issues. We’ll explain the standard that applies to your case in plain language, tell you honestly whether the facts support what you’re hoping for, and handle the details — including making sure any order entered in your case says what the law requires it to say.
Contact The McKinney Law Group to schedule a consultation. Tell us what’s going on, and we’ll help you figure out your next step.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it take to modify a parenting plan in Florida?
The parent seeking the change generally has to show a substantial and material change in circumstances since the last order, and that the modification is in the child’s best interests. Both parts are required, and the change-in-circumstances question comes first. The exact elements depend on which version of section 61.13 applies to your case.
Did Florida change the modification standard?
Yes. Section 61.13 was substantially revised effective July 1, 2023, and the revised version no longer requires that the change in circumstances be “unanticipated.” Cases decided under the earlier version, including Edwards v. Williams, applied the older standard. A Florida divorce attorney can confirm which applies to you.
What is the difference between shared parental responsibility and ultimate decision-making authority?
Shared parental responsibility means both parents confer and decide major issues together. Ultimate decision-making authority means both still confer, but one parent has the final say on specified categories — commonly education or medical care — when they can’t agree.
Does a judge have to explain the reasons in the written order?
Under the case law applied in Edwards, yes — the order must contain findings addressing the statutory elements. When those findings are missing, appellate courts have reversed and sent the case back rather than filling the gap themselves.
Why can’t the appellate court just make the missing findings?
Because appellate courts review records; they don’t act as fact-finders in the first instance. They didn’t hear the testimony or evaluate anyone’s credibility. That’s the trial judge’s role, which is why these cases get remanded.
If my order gets reversed, do I automatically win?
No. A reversal for missing findings sends the case back for a properly explained decision. The trial court may reach the same result, a different one, or something in between. What you’re guaranteed is a decision made under the correct standard.
What should I do if my order seems to be missing required findings?
Contact your attorney quickly. A timely motion for rehearing is often the appropriate way to raise the issue with the trial court, and it can matter for preserving the point on appeal. The deadlines in family law cases are short.
Is a long-distance parenting plan treated differently?
The modification standard is the same, but the practical considerations differ — travel, school-year scheduling, and holiday blocks all factor in. A Tampa family law attorney can walk you through how distance affects the analysis in your specific circumstances.
How do I know whether my situation is strong enough to file for modification?
It depends on what’s changed, how significantly, and how it affects your child. That’s a fact-specific assessment, and it’s worth having a candid conversation with a lawyer before filing rather than after.
Written by Damien McKinney, Founding Partner
Damien McKinney is the Founding Partner of The McKinney Law Group Family & Divorce Lawyers, bringing nearly two decades of experience to complex marital and family law matters. He is licensed in both Florida and North Carolina and has been repeatedly recognized as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers.