It's all online, and it doesn't take long. There's no classroom, no evening session to sit through and nothing to book a babysitter for. The course runs about four hours, you take it on a laptop or the phone in your hand, and you can stop and start as often as you like. Most of our customers finish it in a single evening.

And we handle the certificate for you. Fast Florida Divorce works directly with Our Parenting Class. When you finish, a copy of your Certificate of Completion comes to us automatically and goes in with the documents we file for you. That closes off one of the most common reasons a Florida case with children sits waiting — a certificate the court never received.

To take the course in English, click here ▶

Para realizar el curso en Español haga clic aquí ▶

Florida law requires all divorcing parents with minor children to complete a Parent Education and Family Stabilization Course. The reasoning behind the statute is simple enough: children do better when the adults understand what the divorce process is going to do to them. Florida Statute 61.21 sets out the requirement.

This applies to you only if you and your spouse have minor children together. No children under 18, no course, no certificate, nothing to hold your case up. If you do have minor children, keep reading, because this is the one step in your divorce that nobody can complete on your behalf.

Who has to take it?

Both of you. Section 61.21 requires all parties to a dissolution of marriage involving minor children to complete the course, so you and your spouse each take it separately and each receive your own Certificate of Completion. One certificate doesn't cover two parents. And the fact that your divorce is friendly, agreed and uncontested doesn't excuse either of you. A judge can waive the course for good cause, but getting along with your spouse isn't a good cause.

What happens if a parent doesn't take it?

Section 61.21 gives the judge real options here. A parent who fails to attend a required parenting course can be held in contempt of court, denied shared parental responsibility, denied time-sharing with their own children, or sanctioned in whatever other way the judge thinks appropriate.

In practice the more common outcome is quieter and still painful: the case simply stops. We see it regularly. One parent finishes the course in a single evening, the other never opens it, and a file that was ready to close sits idle for months.

Florida doesn't leave the content to chance

Section 61.21 tells approved providers what ground they have to cover. The list is worth reading, because it explains what you're actually buying: the legal aspects of child-related issues, the emotional consequences of divorce for adults and for children, family dynamics after a separation, the financial responsibilities of raising a child across two homes, information about spousal and child abuse and neglect, and skills for handling the relationships that outlast the marriage.

At Our Parenting Class that translates into a little over four hours across ten modules. It opens with fifty minutes on legal concepts, which is the plain-English version of what parental responsibility and time-sharing are going to look like in practice once the Final Judgment is signed. Then it works through the harder material: grief and loss, how children at different ages absorb the news, communication, anger, and recognizing abuse. The back half turns practical, with half an hour on building a workable Parenting Plan and a section on the effects of divorce on children. Florida's version closes with an exam, which nobody needs to lose sleep over.

Why Florida made this compulsory

Plenty of states leave a parenting course to the judge's discretion. Florida went further and made it a precondition of the Final Judgment for every divorcing parent, cooperative or not.

Divorce by itself is not what marks a child. Conflict between the two people raising them is. A child who watches their parents hand over a schoolbag without an argument takes away the message that the adults are still in charge of the situation. Children used as messengers, or as an audience for grievances about the other parent, take away something else entirely, and they tend to carry it for years.

Almost every module in the course points at that gap. The communication section is about keeping a child out of the space between you. The anger section is about the sentence you want to say, and what to do with it before it gets said in front of them. The section on developmental stages exists because a four-year-old and a fourteen-year-old hear the same announcement in completely different ways, and parents routinely pitch it at the wrong one.

To take the course in English, click here ▶

Para realizar el curso en Español haga clic aquí ▶

What it does for you

Something more self-interested, and worth saying out loud. Most of what separated parents end up arguing about later — the pickup that ran late, the holiday week nobody claimed, the school expense nobody was assigned — comes from a Parenting Plan that was too thin and two people who never settled how they'd fill the gaps. Florida's time-sharing framework gives a judge wide latitude when a plan is vague, and vague plans are the ones that get sent back for revision. The Parenting Plan module goes directly at that, and a sharper plan is both easier for your children to live with and easier for your judge to sign.

Is it worth it?

In Florida this isn't really a weighing exercise, because skipping it isn't on the menu. Without two certificates your Final Judgment doesn't get signed, however immaculate the rest of your file is. So the honest comparison isn't the course against nothing. It's the course against a divorce that sits unfinished, and against whatever that delay costs you in rent, insurance, a refinance you're waiting on, or simply more months of being married to someone you've finished being married to.

Against that, the price is modest. It's listed at $35 and takes a little over four hours, and you can do it at eleven at night once the children are asleep. Both parents need their own certificate, so plan for two enrollments. If money is genuinely tight, say so before you stall your own case — the statute requires the Department of Children and Families to make a sliding-scale option available in each circuit where one exists.

There's a longer-term line on the ledger too. The disputes that send divorced parents back to court are usually the ones that could have been designed out of the Parenting Plan at the beginning. Going back means filing fees, plus a lawyer's billable hours if you bring one. A single argument about a Christmas schedule will outspend both enrollments many times over before anybody sets foot in a courtroom.

None of which is a promise. Four hours of video won't fix a marriage that's already finished, and nobody can guarantee you'll never see a judge again. But you're required to spend the money regardless.

Why we send our customers to Our Parenting Class

Fast Florida Divorce is not a parenting course provider. We don't teach this course and we can't take it for you — Florida law puts it on you personally.

What we can do is point you somewhere reliable. Our Parenting Class is approved by Florida's Department of Children and Families and accepted by Florida circuit courts. It's available in English and in Spanish at the same price, it works on any device, and the Certificate of Completion arrives by email as soon as you're done rather than in three to five business days. And because of our arrangement with them, your certificate reaches us without you having to chase it.

Both of you need one. The single most common delay we see in Florida cases with children is a Petitioner who finished in one evening and a Respondent who never started. Send them this page.

To take the course in English, click here ▶

Para realizar el curso en Español haga clic aquí ▶

DISCLAIMER

Our Parenting Class is an independent third-party provider. Fast Florida Divorce does not own, operate, teach or administer the Parent Education and Family Stabilization Course, and completing it is your personal obligation under Florida Statute § 61.21. Course content, pricing and availability are set by the provider and may change. Course fees are paid directly to the provider and are not included in any Fast Florida Divorce fee.