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13 verbatim mandatory provisions from Okaloosa County Order Of Referral To Family Mediation.
First Judicial Circuit. Check the order's own effective and rescission dates before relying on it. Procedural information only; not legal advice.
Verbatim from the order's own text layer, harvested 2026-07-24; whitespace normalised only. No OCR was used. Only sentences containing mandatory language (shall, must, may not, no later than, within N) are reproduced — the full document is in custody and is the controlling text. • Petitioner or Petitioner’s attorney must choose a mediator from the attached list of state certified, contracted mediators. • If Respondent or Respondent’s attorney does not agree with the mediator selected by the Petitioner, the petitioner must contact the Mediation Services Office at (850) 595-4482, and a mediator will be assigned to the case. • Once the mediator is chosen or assigned, the Petitioner or Petitioner’s attorney must contact the mediator to schedule a mediation conference, and provide the mediator with current mailing addresses and telephone numbers for both parties. • All mediation shall be completed within seventy-five (75) days of the date of this order and prior to requesting a final hearing unless extended or waived by order of the Court, for good cause shown. 3. • Each Party shall prepare a notarized Financial Affidavit in the form approved by the Florida Supreme Court and file the original with the Court prior to the mediation session. • Each Party shall present a copy of the Financial Affidavit filed with the Court to the mediator at the time of the first mediation session. 4. • The provisions of this Order shall not apply to those cases where all the issues have been agreed upon by the Parties and are evidenced by an agreement or stipulation, in writing, signed by the Parties and/or their respective attorneys and filed with the Court at the time of the filing of the action or prior to the scheduled date for the first mediation session. 5. • The attorneys participating in the case shall prepare the Agreement. 6. • The confidentiality of any records of FAMILY MEDIATION SERVICES shall be maintained at all times in accordance with the requirements of Florida Law. 7. • Any time Revised 10/13/04 -- 2 of 3 -- needed above three (3) hours must be agreed upon by the parties and the mediator. • Fees for any additional mediation sessions shall be paid to the Clerk of Court prior to that session. • A copy of the receipt indicating the mediation fees have been paid or the Affidavit approving indigent status must be presented to the mediator at the time of the mediation. • If a scheduled mediation in not canceled at least 72 hours prior to the appointment excluding weekends, the fees will be due and payable to be paid prior to final judgment.
Petitioner or Petitioner’s attorney must choose a mediator from the attached list of state certified, contracted mediators.
Reviewer note: Document sha256: 115fb41948b2e2d68a9abdfdab4beaebd6c1bb0613bdc0e7dfe9dae7d8f30348 (55690 bytes). BenchPath harvested this circuit itself because no research corpus existed for it. Extraction is conservative: mandatory-language sentences only, so this rule is a faithful subset of the order, never a summary of it.
Judge Shull requires ALL motions set for special-set hearing to go to mediation before the hearing is held.
Judge Burkhart will not schedule a temporary-relief hearing until mediation has been held ON the temporary relief sought — mediation first, hearing second.
Judge Sharrit refers ALL cases to mediation (exceptions only by leave) and openly encourages Special Magistrates under Rule 1.490(b) to beat the hearing-time bottleneck.