Jane MusgraveCourt records detail bitter divorce, allegations of sexual, emotional and physical abuse of children.
From all appearances, Mike Caruso was the consummate nice guy.
A father of seven, he coached Little League for more than 30 years. He was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout leader. First elected to the Florida House in 2018, he was quick with a smile for his constituents, often giving them his cellphone number, encouraging them to call.
When he was appointed Palm Beach County clerk and comptroller last year, he didn’t bring in his own people as workers feared. Instead, he embraced the employees, even keeping as his chief deputy, Shannon Ramsey-Chessman, who once positioned herself to run for the top job.
In what would be his final appearance before the County Commission last month, he balked at a request to cut his budget. Any reduction would deprive his workers of well-deserved raises, he said.
“Many of them already don’t make a living wage,” said Caruso, a 67-year-old certified public accountant who last year bought a $3.2 million waterfront condo in Lake Park’s Nautilus 220 building.
The reputation he built as a genial politician blew apart this week when he was accused of five felonies, including child molestation involving assaults on a kindergarten-age relative on three occasions in 2024 and 2025.
Allegations of sexual misconduct were not new to Caruso. They are documented in the court files of the office he controlled before he was arrested Tuesday.
His removal from that job Tuesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis came exactly one year after DeSantis appointed the fellow Republican to the seat, calling him “principled and results-driven.”
During a 14-year court fight with his now former wife, which is still active, Caruso said in court papers that he had been accused of molesting another young male relative. The case file doesn’t offer any documentation for the allegation and he vehemently denied that it happened.
As he did when confronted by the latest allegations, he blamed his ex-wife for making them up.
When state investigators interviewed him in February about molesting the kindergartner, he didn’t say his wife had maliciously accused him of sexually assaulting a young male relative. Instead, he told them that a young female relative had falsely claimed he molested her.
31-year marriage in tatters
Court files paint a disturbing picture of his 31-year marriage to Beverly Caruso, the mother of his seven children.
Three years before Caruso in 2012 filed for divorce from Beverly, she went to court, accusing him of domestic violence and asking a judge to order that he be barred from the home they shared in Delray Beach.
In the petition, Beverly Caruso claims that her husband became enraged when they were driving home from a concert in Jacksonville in March 2009.
Reaching speeds of up to 100 mph, he swerved back and forth on Interstate 95. Believing he was drunk, she asked him to let her drive.
He screamed at her, “I want a divorce,” and “I want to make you suffer,” she wrote.
Eventually, she said, she called 911 and a dispatcher persuaded him to pull off the highway and go to a Quality Inn. A St. Johns County sheriff’s deputy arrived, handed Beverly the keys and told him to get a room at the motel.
Her petition to bar him from the house was denied. “Insufficient evidence of domestic violence as defined by state law,” a judge wrote.
A month after he filed for divorce, he filed a domestic violence petition against Beverly, asking that she be removed from their house.
In it, he said she attacked him in Delray Beach when he was getting out of his car with a box of files, insisting that they belonged to her. “She tackled me to the ground upon which I fell on my face,” he wrote. “Still on top of me, she continued to yell while wrestling me for the box.”
A judge initially approved Caruso’s request, ordering Beverly to temporarily leave the house until a full hearing, with Beverly present, could be held.
Ten days later, on Dec. 28, 2012, Circuit Judge Rosemary Scher lifted the temporary injunction. Not only did the judge say she didn’t believe Caruso was in danger, she noted that an independent witness had contradicted his claims. In any case, she said the dispute could be resolved as part of the couple’s divorce.
‘Physical and emotional abuse’
It would be another two years before the divorce would become final. And for another 12 years, they continued to fight.
Initially, Caruso didn’t hire a lawyer to represent him. He filled out his own papers provided by the clerk’s office, a so-called “self-help” dissolution.
Beverly hired an attorney. In court papers, she accused Caruso of being unhinged.
“The husband has severe emotional problems which consist of anger, rage and a history of physical and emotional abuse of one or more of the children,” wrote attorney John Christiansen, who represents her.
One of their children no longer lived with them because “he was forced out of the home” by Caruso, Christiansen wrote. In his divorce petition, Caruso acknowledged that the son was living with a legal guardian in Palm Beach Gardens.
In recent years, after he squeaked into his first state House seat with a 32-vote victory in 2018, he told a harrowing tale of a son who suffered from schizophrenia and spent six years on the streets, lost to the family.
None of that is mentioned in the court files. Beverly insisted she should have custody of their three remaining minor children. Then 54 years old, she said she had been a stay-at-home mom for 24 years and couldn’t be expected to find a job. She demanded alimony, child support and ownership of their house.
A month later, in January 2013, Caruso hired an attorney, who launched a counterattack.
“The children should reside with the husband a majority of the time as this dissolution of marriage has caused the wife severe emotional health problems, which in turn, is causing a negative impact on the minor children,” attorney Jay Schwartz wrote on Caruso’s behalf.
As evidence of her shaky mental state, Schwartz claimed that Beverly falsely accused Caruso of abusing a minor boy, prompting an investigation.
“The wife has full and complete knowledge that the allegations are not true,” Schwartz wrote. ”The wife is intentionally alienating the minor children and all of their other children.”
‘War of the Roses’
As the fight raged, most of it centered on the seven-bedroom house on Lake Ida in Delray Beach and money.
After the temporary injunction was lifted, Beverly moved back into the house with Caruso.
Then Circuit Judge Martin Colin in July 2013 compared their living arrangement to the “War of the Roses” movie.
“They have dividing walls up between each party’s section of the house that they are exclusively living in with locks on the door to prevent the other from entering the receptive (sic) places with a common area that they both can share when they’re both there,” he wrote.
Caruso, Colin said, didn’t live at the house because he spent much of his time at the home of his then girlfriend, Tracy Stein, whom he married in January 2015.
The estranged son, who was 18, had moved back into the house, Colin said. “The husband’s relationship with (the son) sounds very bad in that they are at the point where they are having physical altercations with each other,” he wrote.
Had he known earlier about the shared arrangement and the troubles between Caruso and his son, Colin said he might have given Beverly exclusive use of the house. Instead, the judge blessed the unusual house-sharing.
“The court does this only because the husband has financial obligations for that home and if the court gave the wife exclusive use of the home the court would have to modify those financial obligations dramatically,” Colin said. “The husband would say that he would need money to have another place to live and the wife’s alimony would be dramatically reduced as the husband’s current obligation is to pay for the expenses on the home.”
Until the divorce was finalized, he ordered Caruso to pay $5,500 monthly in alimony and $1,072 in child support for the two remaining minor children.
Ultimately, in June 2014, Colin granted the divorce.
The war continues
The judge increased the alimony to $6,000 a month until the house was sold for a minimum of $1.3 million. Then, once Beverly moved into a new house, the monthly payments would increase to $7,200. In addition, Caruso was ordered to pay Beverly $238,595 — her share of their joint assets. Once the house sold, they would split the profits.
While Colin said Caruso would also have to pay child support for the two minor children, the exact amount wasn’t set until later.
But the battle didn’t end.
Within two weeks, Beverly was back in court, saying Colin had made several mistakes in his final order and objected to his contention that, having not worked for decades, she was capable of earning $2,000 a month.
Colin rejected her request to reconsider his final order, but the fight continued.
Caruso continued to insist that his financial situation had changed and his alimony payments should be reduced. Beverly continued to insist he was hiding assets and not reporting all his income.
The fighting continued until April 2015. The case was closed by Circuit Judge Jaimie Goodman in September 2016 because nothing had been filed for more than a year.
But the respite was short-lived.
In January 2018, Caruso went back to court, saying he had sold his accounting firm, causing his income to plummet. He could no longer afford to pay $7,200 in alimony, he claimed.
Beverly fired back, saying he was lying. In November 2025, her attorney said Caruso claimed he “no longer has employment income” because he was retired. At that time, he was working as county clerk, making $219,000 annually.
‘He had a clean vet’
Caruso, facing term limits after seven years in the Florida House, had been a contender for lieutenant governor in 2025 as a reward for backing DeSantis in his fight to enact strict immigration rules over the objection of legislative leaders.
DeSantis appointed him clerk to replace Clerk Joe Abruzzo, a Democrat, when Abruzzo left to become Palm Beach County administrator.
Even though the Carusos’ divorce and their dueling domestic violence complaints are public record, DeSantis on Wednesday told reporters that Caruso’s background was thoroughly investigated. “He had a clean vet,” DeSantis said. “He was well-regarded in the community.”
Caruso, who first sought election in an unsuccessful bid for Delray Beach mayor in 1990, had no primary opponent Tuesday for the Republican nomination for clerk. He faced a challenge in November from Democrat Yvette Drucker, a Boca Raton City Council member. He had raised $69,000 for the campaign.
The last legal salvo in the Carusos’ divorce was fired in December when Beverly sought attorneys fees and sanctions against her ex-husband for being dragged back into court to fight his efforts to reduce his alimony.
Ruling that Beverly was entitled to attorneys fees, Circuit Judge Laura Burkhart ordered the two sides to hammer out an agreement or she would. A hearing to determine how much Caruso would be forced to pay was scheduled for May 26. It was canceled.
Since then, the case has been dormant.
Those who knew Caruso during the seven years he served in the Florida House said they are both shocked and saddened by his arrest.
The report by an investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is graphic.
The boy described his abuse in little-kid-speak detail. During a seven-day family cruise in August 2025 that left from PortMiami, the boy said Caruso “pee’d” in his mouth while the two showered together and it was “yucky,” according to the arrest affidavit. The youngster said Caruso fondled him while the two played soccer at a family gathering and during a fishing outing in November 2024 in Orlando.
The investigation began after the boy’s father in October 2025 saw him playing inappropriately with his younger brother. When the father talked to the boy, the story spilled out.
Caruso appeared Wednesday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, where his attorney, Jason Weiss, put out a statement saying, “Mr. Caruso is innocent of these allegations and intends to vigorously defend himself against these charges.”
He was immediately taken to Orlando, where the charges were filed.
Florida Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, who worked closely with Caruso when they both represented southern coastal areas of the county, said her former Republican colleague was easy to work with and cared about his constituents.
“He was a very professional person. He was pleasant and dedicated to his job,” she said. “We’ll just have to let the law take its course. People are innocent until they’re proven guilty.”
Editor’s note: After publication, Gossett-Seidman said she read the police report and viewed it as shocking, saying, “I hope they prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.”
