Short Course Description
Navigate interstate child-support matters with a disciplined UIFSA framework
This 120-minute, self-paced professional course gives mediators and attorneys a practical method for identifying the legally authorized forum, the controlling support order, the available remedy, and the limits of negotiated resolution. It is Florida-centered and nationally useful, with primary authorities reviewed through September 1, 2026.
Who this course is for
The course is intended for family mediators, family-law attorneys, legal-services lawyers, government child-support counsel, court-connected neutrals, parenting coordinators, and other professionals who encounter interstate parentage or support issues.
What is covered
- Putative, presumed, alleged, acknowledged, and adjudicated parentage status.
- UIFSA personal jurisdiction over a nonresident and the due-process analysis.
- Support establishment, multiple-order problems, and controlling-order determinations.
- Continuing exclusive jurisdiction: when it continues, when it ends, and the role of written consent.
- Registration for enforcement, defenses, arrears, and choice-of-law limits.
- Interstate modification and the distinction between enforcement authority and modification authority.
- The critical separation between UIFSA support jurisdiction and UCCJEA custody jurisdiction.
- Mediation boundaries, informed consent, screening, power imbalance, and unauthorized-practice concerns.
- Enforcement or set-aside of mediated family agreements, including disclosure, coercion, fraud, drafting, and court review.
- Practitioner strategy, file triage, forum analysis, documentary proof, and implementation planning.
Interactive learning and simulations
Learners work through branching jurisdiction decisions, order-history analysis, parentage and forum hypotheticals, mediator caucus strategy, settlement-durability checks, module knowledge checks, and a capstone interstate-support file simulation. Guno Ritfeld serves as the core video instructor, supported by a professional scenario character.
Considerations for mediators
Mediators learn how to identify issues that require legal determination, structure safe and balanced participation, reality-test enforceability across state lines, avoid converting uncertain jurisdiction into an unenforceable bargain, and document terms without exceeding the neutral role.
Considerations for attorneys
Attorneys learn how to build the order and residence timeline, distinguish registration from modification, preserve jurisdictional objections, test the tribunal's authority, advise on parentage consequences, and draft settlement provisions that can be approved and implemented in the correct forum.
Course format and completion
The course contains 10 modules and 30 learning scenes, 20 captioned instructor/scenario videos, nine module checks, downloadable practitioner tools, a complete transcript, and a 10-question final assessment. Learners must visit all scenes, answer every module check, and earn at least 80 percent on the final assessment. Progress, score, session time, and resume position are reported through SCORM 1.2.
Florida mediator CME: Eligible for up to 2.4 CME hours; mediators are responsible for self-reporting at renewal. No Florida Bar CLE credit is represented unless separately stated after accreditation.
Educational use only. Learners should verify current enactments, local procedure, subsequent history, and case-specific facts before relying on any authority in practice.
Instructor(s)
