Judgment Collection Case Law in Florida

This page analyzes the most important Florida court decisions on judgment collection.

Prejudgment Asset Freezes

A federal court has no equitable power to freeze a defendant’s assets while a claim for money damages is still being litigated; the U.S. Supreme Court left the fraudulent-transfer case open, and Florida’s own statutes supply that exception.

Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 U.S. 308 (1999). Leading case. A federal district court had no authority to enjoin a Mexican holding company from disposing of its assets while unsecured noteholders litigated a contract claim for money damages; equity historically offered no such remedy. The Court, 5–4, expressly took no position on a fraudulent-conveyance claim by a creditor without a judgment, 527 U.S. at 324 n.7. Until judgment, a general creditor has “no cognizable interest, either at law or in equity, in the property of his debtor.”

Under Florida’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, chapter 726, a creditor whose claim is not yet reduced to judgment may obtain an injunction against further disposition of the transferred asset, a receiver, or attachment, § 726.108(1)(b) and (1)(c)1.–2. Chapters 76 and 77 add prejudgment attachment and garnishment. Florida’s courts may grant a limited prejudgment asset freeze under those statutes.

How Proceedings Supplementary Work

A judgment creditor begins proceedings supplementary by motion and affidavit in the case that produced the judgment, and two routes are then open: a Notice to Appear, or a supplemental complaint on a chapter 726 claim.

The first route is the Notice to Appear, § 56.29(2): the creditor describes the property with reasonable particularity and serves the notice under chapter 48; the recipient, given seven or more business days, answers by affidavit. Discovery runs under the civil rules, a jury is available under § 56.18, and costs and fees fall on the judgment debtor, § 56.29(8). The court may then order the debtor’s non-exempt property in the recipient’s hands levied on and applied toward the judgment, § 56.29(6)(a).

The second route, § 56.29(9), is a supplemental complaint asserting a chapter 726 claim, docketed under the same case number, and a money judgment may run against any initial or subsequent transferee whether or not the transferee still holds the property.

Section 56.29(3)(a) looks back one year from service of process on the debtor in the original lawsuit. If during that year the debtor owned or paid for personal property that a spouse, relative, or person on confidential terms now claims, the burden of proof is his. He must prove the transfer was not made to delay, hinder, or defraud creditors. If it was, the court shall void it and direct the sheriff to take the property, § 56.29(3)(b), unless it is exempt or has passed to a bona fide purchaser for value without notice.

Longo v. Associated Limousine Services, Inc., 236 So. 3d 1115 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018). Leading case. A creditor whose motion and affidavit satisfy § 56.29(1) is entitled to proceedings supplementary as a matter of right, and the court has no discretion to deny them. A Notice to Appear is a separate question: the creditor must describe the debtor’s property in the third party’s hands, a requirement the court refused to read liberally, though the description may come by later supplemental affidavit. On an alter-ego theory, describing the alleged alter ego’s own property satisfies the requirement.

Bleidt v. Lobato, 664 So. 2d 1074 (Fla. 5th DCA 1995) (en banc). Under the statute as it stood in 1995, the creditor needed only a writ of execution that remained unsatisfied; the Fifth District, sitting en banc, receded from its own earlier decisions requiring a writ returned unsatisfied. Since 2016, § 56.29(1) requires an unsatisfied judgment or judgment lien plus a creditor’s affidavit stating that the execution is valid and outstanding; the sheriff’s return no longer figures.

Salina Manufacturing Co. v. Diner’s Club, Inc., 382 So. 2d 1309 (Fla. 3d DCA 1980). Priority among judgment creditors by the order their writs reached the sheriff applies only to property already subject to execution. A boat titled by the entireties became reachable only through one creditor’s proceedings supplementary, so that creditor was paid first from the levy, ahead of a creditor who had delivered its writ years earlier and done nothing. Under Lamchick (Fla. 3d DCA 1995), below, the rule does not extend to real property.

Zureikat v. Shaibani, 944 So. 2d 1019 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006). Proceedings supplementary enforce an existing judgment lien and are not an independent cause of action, so no statute of limitations barred a creditor who moved for them more than four years after the underlying fraud. The debtor, who had concealed a bank account and told the creditor the money was lost in the stock market, was also equitably estopped from raising the defense. The court affirmed a $130,000 equitable lien on the homestead for funds traced from the fraud into its purchase.

Young v. McKenzie, 46 So. 2d 184 (Fla. 1950). Decided under the repealed proceedings-supplementary statutes of 1941, not the current § 56.29. Proceedings supplementary are not an action on the judgment; they rest on a valid, outstanding execution, whose life is at most twenty years, so a proceeding begun inside the twenty years but not finished within them became futile.

Impleading Third Parties

A third party whose property may be affected by proceedings supplementary must be impleaded and heard before any order reaches that property, and the statutory notice, served without any new complaint, brings that party before the court.

Who Must Be Impleaded and Heard

Meyer v. Faust, 83 So. 2d 847 (Fla. 1955). Leading case. No order directing the sheriff to take allegedly fraudulently transferred property may issue unless every person whose rights may be affected is impleaded, made a party, and given a full and fair hearing. An order that the debtor’s wife appear and be examined concerning her husband’s property gave notice only of an examination, and an oral direction that she file a brief was not a full and fair hearing. Entireties property cannot, prima facie, be reached for either spouse’s individual judgment debt.

Kornberg v. Krupka, 118 So. 2d 790 (Fla. 3d DCA 1960). A wife may be questioned about the location and extent of her husband’s assets, but where her own property rights may be affected she must be impleaded and heard on that issue. An order subjecting entireties property to execution could not stand where she had never been impleaded or served with the affidavit that began the proceedings.

Boats Express, Inc. v. Thackeray, 978 So. 2d 206 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008). A money judgment cannot be entered against a person impleaded into proceedings supplementary who was never served with a complaint alleging the fraudulent transfer, never appeared as a party, and attended the examination only as a witness. Due process requires notice and an opportunity to be heard before final judgment; the $45,975.42 judgment was reversed.

Day v. Miramar Holding Corp., 362 So. 2d 305 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978). An insolvent debtor’s conveyance of thirty-seven condominium apartments and twelve first mortgages to a related Cayman corporation, for far less than their value, was set aside as a fraud on creditors. Money judgments against impleaded third parties who held none of the debtor’s assets were properly vacated under the statute as it then read. Today’s § 56.29(6)(a) authorizes a money judgment “irrespective of whether such person has retained the property,” the scope question in the district split that follows.

Kennedy v. RES-GA Lake Shadow, LLC, 224 So. 3d 931 (Fla. 1st DCA 2017). A person holding a claim adverse to both creditor and debtor must be impleaded and given a full and fair opportunity to be heard before any adverse order issues. A writ and sheriff’s deed that gave the creditor a half interest in a condominium the divorce decree had awarded entirely to the debtor’s former wife, entered without impleading or notifying her, were vacated.

How an Impleaded Party Is Brought In

NTS Fort Lauderdale Office Joint Venture v. Serchay, 710 So. 2d 1027 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998). Under the pre-2016 statute, an affidavit that the sheriff held a valid, unsatisfied execution was the only showing needed to implead a third party. An impleader order only allows the third party to be sued and decides no substantive rights, so no prima facie evidentiary showing precedes it. The 2016 amendment added the particularity requirement Longo enforced, so Serchay now governs entitlement to the proceedings rather than the Notice to Appear.

Sanchez v. Renda Broadcasting Corp., 127 So. 3d 627 (Fla. 5th DCA 2013). A creditor need not allege a fraudulent transfer to use proceedings supplementary; the statute supports impleading a third party to pierce the corporate veil where other improper conduct is alleged. There, the sole shareholder had let an undercapitalized shell with no assets, no bank account, and no business sign the lease.

Fundamental Long Term Care Holdings, LLC v. Estate of Jackson, 110 So. 3d 6 (Fla. 2d DCA 2012), review denied, 118 So. 3d 220 (Fla. 2013). A Florida court gains personal jurisdiction over a newly impleaded defendant without any impleader complaint being filed and served; § 56.29 controls the procedure. Personal service of an order to show cause, which told sixteen new defendants that the creditor sought to enforce a $110 million judgment against them, satisfied due process.

General Electric Capital Corp. v. Shattuck, 132 So. 3d 908 (Fla. 2d DCA 2014). Though no complaint need be filed, the § 56.29 motion and the statute’s notice and hearing are still required before a late-added defendant comes under the court’s personal jurisdiction. Sixteen parties could not be added to a $1.11 billion judgment by a post-trial motion served only on the original defendant’s receiver and granted the same day. Their business ties and their financing and control of the defense supplied no exception.

General Guaranty Insurance Co. of Fla. v. DaCosta, 190 So. 2d 211 (Fla. 3d DCA 1966). A circuit court may implead the judgment debtor’s liability insurer and require it to answer or show cause; the debtor’s rights under the policy are property in a third party’s hands, and nothing exempts liability-policy proceeds from execution. Impleader decides nothing about liability, and the insurer keeps its defenses, such as breach of the policy.

Allied Industries International, Inc. v. Agfa-Gevaert, Inc., 688 F. Supp. 1516 (S.D. Fla. 1988), aff’d, 900 F.2d 264 (11th Cir. 1990). A court in proceedings supplementary may reach a successor corporation that is a mere continuation of the judgment debtor and hold it liable for the predecessor’s judgment; the successor had taken the debtor’s leases, office, equipment, employees, and customers without consideration. The debtor’s sole shareholder, who “repossessed” $140,000 of the corporation’s assets while the creditor’s action was pending, was personally liable in that amount.

MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. O’Brien Marketing, Inc., 913 F. Supp. 1536 (S.D. Fla. 1995). A court may implead a corporation alleged to be the judgment debtor’s alter ego and, where complete domination and misuse of the corporate form are proved, hold it liable for the whole judgment. The alter-ego test applied was the federal common-law test, because federal law preempted the underlying tariff duty; the decision does not state Florida veil-piercing law.

LB Judgment Holdings v. Boschetti, 271 So. 3d 115 (Fla. 3d DCA 2019). A judgment creditor pleading alter-ego and chapter 726 theories against impleaded entities may keep lis pendens notices on their real estate by showing a viable, good-faith claim; no trial or mini-trial is required. Single-purpose entities owned by the debtor’s relatives and sharing managers, addresses, realtors, bank signature authority, and counsel supplied that nexus; the order discharging seventeen notices was reversed. Once § 56.29’s jurisdictional requirements are met, the statute is construed liberally to give the creditor the most complete relief possible.

Bodywell Nutrition, LLC v. Fortress Systems, LLC, 846 F. Supp. 2d 1317 (S.D. Fla. 2012). A federal district decision that does not bind Florida courts. A judgment creditor that took an assignment of the debtor’s rights against its liability insurer could not litigate coverage through proceedings supplementary where the insurer had already filed a declaratory judgment action raising the same coverage issues. The coverage dispute belonged in that first-filed action.

Bear v. Underhill, 754 F. Supp. 3d 1185 (N.D. Fla. 2024). A judgment creditor may pursue actual fraud under § 56.29(3) by notice to appear, or chapter 726 claims by supplemental complaint, but not the same actual-fraud theory both ways. A § 56.29(3) claim cannot be pleaded in a supplemental complaint at all. The routes differ on five points: who bears the burden, whether real property is reachable, whether constructive fraud is available, whether a jury is available, and which deadline applies. A federal district decision that does not bind Florida courts.

Nonresident Impleader Defendants

Neff v. Adler, 416 So. 2d 1240 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982). A court’s continuing jurisdiction over a judgment debtor as trustee does not carry over to impleading him individually when he is a nonresident. Section 56.29 is read together with the long-arm statute, so the creditor must plead facts supporting personal jurisdiction over a nonresident impleaded party, such as Florida residence or a tortious act committed in Florida. A bare motion reciting that he received the assets is not enough.

Jarboe Family & Friends Irrevocable Living Trust v. Spielman, 136 So. 3d 666 (Fla. 2d DCA 2014). Satisfying § 56.29’s procedural requirements does not by itself give a Florida court personal jurisdiction over a nonresident impleader defendant; long-arm jurisdiction is a separate question. A Kentucky trust and its trustee, impleaded on a $754,720.40 judgment, moved to dismiss and filed an affidavit denying Florida contacts. That shifted the burden to the creditor, and unsworn allegations that the debtor had fraudulently transferred assets to the trust did not carry it.

Who Bears the Burden on a Transfer

A judgment debtor whose family member or confidant claims personal property he held in the year before he was served must prove the transfer was not made to delay, hinder, or defraud creditors; for older transfers the creditor must prove the fraud.

Swartz v. Lipsky, 241 So. 2d 448 (Fla. 3d DCA 1970). The one-year lookback does not exempt fraudulent transfers made outside the year; it only shifts the burden of proof to the debtor for transfers inside it. For an older transfer the creditor keeps the claim and simply carries the burden of proving the transfer fraudulent. The version applied measured the year from issuance of execution; since 1972 it runs from service of process.

Ball v. Papp, 317 So. 2d 801 (Fla. 4th DCA 1975). The 1972 amendment that moved the one-year lookback to the date of service was not retroactive, so a stock transfer made more than a year before service left the burden on the creditor, who made no prima facie case. The majority read the costs provision as it then stood to allow no costs against a prevailing impleaded third party, over a dissent; today’s § 56.29(8) taxes costs against the judgment debtor.

Morton v. Cord Realty, Inc., 677 So. 2d 1322 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996). The “defendant” who carries the one-year burden, now under § 56.29(3)(a), includes an impleaded transferee and not only the judgment debtor, so refusing to weigh the transferee’s evidence denied him due process. Chapter 726 supplies the substantive law: § 56.29 places the burden, but how a defendant may prove a transfer was not fraudulent “is governed by case law and the UFTA.”

RREF SNV-FL SSL, LLC v. Shamrock Storage, LLC, 178 So. 3d 90 (Fla. 1st DCA 2015). A debtor gave his wife all his shares in a hotel company for nothing, months before a foreclosure on a loan he had guaranteed. The burden was his to show the transfer was not made to delay, hinder, or defraud creditors; an order implying the creditor had to prove fraud was error. The order also failed because it tested only “hinder” and not “defraud” or “delay.”

Mejia v. Ruiz, 985 So. 2d 1109 (Fla. 3d DCA 2008). Under the pre-2016 statute, a returned unsatisfied writ and an affidavit listing the persons to be impleaded opened the proceedings. Impleader implies no liability; it gives the third party a chance to raise defenses. Whether a transfer was “made or contrived to delay, hinder, or defraud” is determined by reference to § 726.105(1), and shareholders who ignored the § 607.1406 dissolution notice forfeited that section’s limited immunity.

General Trading Inc. v. Yale Materials Handling Corp., 119 F.3d 1485 (11th Cir. 1997). In a federal Rule 69 proceeding applying § 56.29, an order to show cause brought new transferees before the court without a summons or complaint, because the Florida statute’s prerequisites were all that was needed. The finding that a successor company was not a fraudulent transferee was vacated. The magistrate had valued the transferred assets without the good will that moved with the business, and had treated the successor as a non-insider though the debtor’s controlling shareholder’s son owned it.

Perrone v. Frank, 80 So. 3d 402 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012). Alter-ego and veil-piercing findings in proceedings supplementary must rest on competent, substantial evidence. A magistrate who rejected the only witness’s testimony as not credible was left with an evidentiary vacuum rather than affirmative proof, so adopting a report resting on nothing else was an abuse of discretion.

Licata v. Acolite Sign Co., 183 So. 2d 865 (Fla. 3d DCA 1966). A judgment debtor fraudulently transferred her car, and the person who then bought it from the transferee stayed subject to execution unless she proved herself a bona fide purchaser for value without notice. She had not shown the purchase was for value and knew facts that put her on inquiry. The bona fide purchaser exception now appears in § 56.29(3)(b).

Jacksonville Bulls Football, Ltd. v. Blatt, 535 So. 2d 626 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988). Selling the debtor’s football and office equipment for cash above fair market value was not fraudulent, and refunding season ticketholders, who held contract claims once the season was cancelled, was a valid preference even though it hindered other creditors. An affiliate’s consent judgment was no fraud either: a foreign judgment recorded in Florida cannot be executed on until thirty days after the clerk mails notice, so the affiliate docketed its writ first.

Clampitt v. Wick, 320 So. 3d 826 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021). Section 56.29(3)(a)’s burden shift reaches personal property only, so a creditor attacking a transfer of real property keeps the burden of proving it was made to delay, hinder, or defraud. The creditor also bears the initial burden of bringing the transfer within the subsection. A spouse not seeking possession of levied property need not post a bond to oppose a notice to appear; the § 56.16 bond buys possession, and chapter 56 nowhere conditions an objection on it.

What the Creditor May Ask and Get

The examination in proceedings supplementary reaches the debtor’s property wherever it sits and any document that might show what property he has, so long as the creditor has a reasonable basis for believing property was concealed or fraudulently transferred.

Reese v. Baker, 98 Fla. 52, 123 So. 3 (Fla. 1929). The examination reaches the debtor’s property “whether such property be located within or beyond the boundaries of the State of Florida,” and jailing a debtor who refuses disclosure is not imprisonment for debt, because the jailing punishes the refusal. The examination has a limit: it may not be used to pry into the debtor’s private affairs absent a reasonable, well-founded belief that property was concealed or fraudulently transferred.

Keystone Trust Co. v. Rockefeller, 118 So. 2d 604 (Fla. 1st DCA 1960). A trial court abuses its discretion by refusing to compel production of a document that “might tend to show what property the defendant has,” which defines the examination’s statutory scope. Once the creditor makes a reasonable showing that a document is of that kind, the creditor decides whether to inspect it. A partnership agreement bearing on whether land titled in the debtor and his wife was bought with partnership funds fell squarely inside that scope.

Jim Appley’s Tru-Arc, Inc. v. Liquid Extraction Systems Ltd. Partnership, 526 So. 2d 177 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988). A judgment creditor is entitled to broad discovery into the debtor’s finances, including jointly owned property, and the debtor’s bare assertion that he owns nothing individually does not end it where financial statements he gave banks showed substantial individual assets. Discovery into the wife’s separate income and assets requires a proper predicate first. The levy on the boat was dissolved because the writ reached the sheriff after the boat was retitled jointly, creating no lien.

What Proceedings Supplementary Can Reach

Proceedings supplementary reach the debtor’s non-exempt property in any form, including a pending lawsuit or other chose in action, but not exempt property, a personal tort claim, future spendthrift-trust income, or land he holds for someone else.

MYD Marine Distributor, Inc. v. International Paint Ltd., 201 So. 3d 843 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). A debtor’s own pending lawsuit is a chose in action and therefore property reachable in proceedings supplementary. Assigning the whole claim to the creditor was within the court’s discretion where the debtor offered no evidence that the suit was worth materially more than the debt. A pending lawsuit is not too hard to value: a plaintiff must quantify its damages, and lawsuits are valued for settlement and funding.

Donan v. Dolce Vita Sa, Inc., 992 So. 2d 859 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008). A court may refuse to let a judgment creditor buy, at a sheriff’s sale, the debtor’s pending claim against that same creditor. Choses in action are ordinarily reachable, but the statute says the judge “may” order execution, so the court could quash rather than let the creditor wipe out a claim against himself that no court had decided. MYD Marine later confined the decision to that conflict of interest.

Arellano v. Bisson, 847 So. 2d 998 (Fla. 3d DCA 2003). Income a judgment debtor might one day receive from a spendthrift trust is not property a creditor can reach in proceedings supplementary; the trust’s terms prohibited the beneficiary from assigning her interest and prohibited creditors from attaching it. Under Bacardi v. White, invading a spendthrift trust is a last resort available only after ordinary enforcement is exhausted, so the motion to implead the settlor was properly denied; Green, J., dissented.

Bacardi v. White, 463 So. 2d 218 (Fla. 1985). Garnishing spendthrift-trust disbursements to enforce alimony is a last resort, available only when traditional enforcement has failed. Attorney’s fees awarded incident to the divorce or its enforcement are collectible the same way. The writ reaches disbursements due or actually made; a court cannot order a discretionary payment, though it may garnish one the trustee chooses to make. A continuing writ for future alimony may stand in lieu of ne exeat, and the Florida Supreme Court quashed the Third District’s contrary decision and remanded.

Crawford v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 139 So. 2d 500 (Fla. 1st DCA 1962). Money from the sale, mortgage, or rental of entireties property keeps its entireties character; a corporation’s debt to the husband and wife that traced to those sources was beyond the husband’s individual creditor absent proof the spouses had ended the estate. Impleading the corporation and requiring it to state under oath what it owed the husband individually was proper, but deciding the wife’s rights ex parte, when she was neither impleaded nor a party, was error.

Estey v. Sharp Electronics Corp., 409 So. 2d 217 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982). Land titled in the debtor son “c/o” his father, who had bought it and paid every expense, was held on a resulting trust for the father, so the son had no beneficial interest his creditor could reach. The § 56.29 burden shift applies by its terms only to personal property; where real property is at issue, the creditor keeps the burden of proving fraud.

Mickler v. Aaron, 490 So. 2d 1343 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986). A judgment creditor holding a $12 million judgment could not implead the debtor’s former attorneys to execute on potential legal-malpractice claims against them. A legal malpractice claim is not assignable, because legal services are personal and confidential, and a mere right of action for a personal tort is not property a creditor can reach under the statute.

O’Steen v. First Union National Bank of Florida, 661 So. 2d 913 (Fla. 1st DCA 1995). A court may not order judgment debtors to pay their current tax liability from other funds so as to free up an earlier overpayment and manufacture a refund the creditor could levy on. That converts exempt assets into non-exempt assets and exceeds a statute that reaches only property “not exempt from execution.”

Money Judgments, Fees, and Costs

Proceedings supplementary can end in a money judgment against an impleaded party, limited to what that party actually received; attorney’s fees and costs fall on the judgment debtor alone.

Pollizzi v. Paulshock, 52 So. 3d 786 (Fla. 5th DCA 2010). A court may enter a money judgment against shareholders and officers who drained the debtor corporation’s operating account, and the impleaded parties had due process where they had notice and defended at a non-jury trial. Each defendant is liable only for what he actually received; the procedure does not permit joint and several liability among multiple impleaded defendants. Decided under the 2009 statute; today’s § 56.29(6)(a) authorizes money judgments “subject to applicable principles of equity,” of which the each-for-what-he-received rule is one.

Gaedeke Holdings, Ltd. v. Mortgage Consultants, Inc., 877 So. 2d 824 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004). Attorney’s fees and costs in proceedings supplementary run against the judgment debtor and cannot be awarded against impleaded third parties. The creditor was not left without a remedy: because the debtor had fraudulently transferred funds to the impleaded parties and could not pay, the court should have ordered those transferred assets applied to the fee and cost judgment. That the judgment debt itself consisted of attorney’s fees made no difference.

Paul v. Avrahami, 216 So. 3d 647 (Fla. 4th DCA 2017). Florida law clearly bars fee awards against impleaded parties in proceedings supplementary, so a creditor who sought fees against an impleaded trust and trustee and kept pressing after the trial court corrected itself had filed a frivolous claim. The sanction under § 57.105 runs against the creditor’s counsel rather than the creditor, because the defect was legal rather than factual. The 2016 revision replaced “the defendant” with “the judgment debtor” in what is now § 56.29(8), so only the judgment debtor pays attorney’s fees.

The District Split on Section 56.29(3)

Florida’s appellate districts are divided over whether a judgment creditor can obtain a money judgment against a transferee under § 56.29(3), and whether that remedy lasts the life of the judgment or ends when chapter 726’s four-year repose period runs.

Chapter 726’s Time Limits Govern

McGregor v. Fowler White Burnett, P.A., 332 So. 3d 481 (Fla. 4th DCA 2021). Relief under § 56.29(3)(b) is limited to voiding the transfer and directing the sheriff to take identifiable personal property, so that subsection yields no money judgment and § 56.29(6) supplies none. A money judgment for property the transferee no longer holds runs through § 56.29(9), which is expressly subject to chapter 726’s time limits, so the creditor’s claims were barred by § 726.110. Funds already disbursed from two law-firm trust accounts were out of (3)(b)’s reach.

Martinez v. JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., Nos. 4D2025-1072, 4D2025-1073, and 4D2025-1075 (Fla. 4th DCA July 1, 2026). A supplemental complaint under § 56.29(9) relates back to the motion that commenced proceedings supplementary, because § 56.29 is a special statutory proceeding and that motion is the pleading for Rule 1.190(c). Three dismissals resting on McGregor and § 726.110 were reversed. The court distinguished McGregor rather than receding from it, and § 726.110 still runs claim by claim from the motion date.

Uoweit, LLC v. Fleming, 300 So. 3d 1201 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). Section 726.110 governs fraudulent-transfer claims brought in proceedings supplementary under § 56.29. McGregor quotes this decision for the point that Biel Reo, below, construed the 2012 statute, which the legislature has since amended.

Jones v. MTLC Investment, Ltd. (In re Hill), 332 B.R. 835 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2005). Section 56.29 “does not create substantive rights of recovery nor provide a basis for entry of a money judgment”; it is a procedural mechanism. Proceedings supplementary may begin anytime during the judgment’s twenty-year life, but § 726.110 still governs the fraudulent-transfer claim. A bankruptcy court applying Florida law; the decision does not bind Florida courts.

British American Insurance Co. v. Fullerton (In re British American Insurance Co.), 607 B.R. 753 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 2019). A § 56.29(3)(b) claim is intentional-fraud only, so neither a constructive-fraud theory nor a money judgment can go by notice to appear. The rest goes by supplemental complaint under § 56.29(9), which is identical to an independent chapter 726 action and carries § 726.110’s four-year period; $260,500 of the transfers was barred. McGregor draws its rule from this decision. A bankruptcy court applying Florida law; a Florida circuit court declined to follow it in 2021.

The Remedy Lasts the Life of the Judgment

Rosenberg v. U.S. Bank, N.A., 360 So. 3d 795 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023). Section 56.29(3)’s remedy lasts the life of the judgment rather than chapter 726’s four years, because subsection (3) is open only to judgment holders, begins by motion, and shifts the burden. Subsections (3) and (6) authorize a money judgment against a transferee who no longer holds the property, and (3) reaches funds and choses in action. The debtor had transferred his own 2013 judgment to his son’s trust the day after winning it.

Biel Reo, LLC v. Barefoot Cottages Development Co., LLC, 156 So. 3d 506 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014). Leading case. Proceedings supplementary may be begun for the life of the judgment whenever the creditor holds an unsatisfied judgment or judgment lien and files the motion and affidavit; neither chapter 726’s limitations period nor § 736.0505 bars them. The court construed the 2012 statute; the 2014 amendment added chapter 726’s incorporation, now § 56.29(9), and McGregor and Uoweit confine the decision to the earlier text on that basis.

Dillworth v. Hinton (In re Hinton), 378 B.R. 371 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2007). Chapter 726 does not foreclose a judgment creditor from pursuing transfer claims through § 56.29; the two statutes “co-exist under Florida law, albeit not in perfect harmony,” and the court called its ruling a very limited one. Reading the text, the court also concluded that the power to set aside a transfer reaches personal property only, not real property, and does not reach property exempt from execution. Decided by a bankruptcy court; it does not bind Florida courts.

The Pending Certified Questions

Saadi v. Maroun, 157 F.4th 1353 (11th Cir. 2025). The Eleventh Circuit certified five questions to the Florida Supreme Court. Three ask whether § 56.29(3) allows a money judgment against a transferee, whether funds sought under (3)(b) must be identifiable and whether real property is reachable, and whether the 2014 and 2016 amendments subjected that remedy to chapter 726’s time limits. The last two ask whether § 95.051’s statutory tolling applies to chapter 726 claims and whether § 95.051(1)(c) covers concealing the tortfeasor as well as the tort.

The questions were still pending on July 1, 2026, and until the Florida Supreme Court answers, a transfer outside chapter 726’s repose period is beyond reach under McGregor and exposed for the judgment’s full twenty years under Rosenberg.

The third certified question turns on statutory text: § 56.29(3)(a) and (3)(b) each say “personal property,” and In re Hinton is the decision that read the statute that way.

The broad reading of § 56.29(6) in Rosenberg and the charging-order decisions, where Ramos (Fla. 3d DCA 2021) holds that § 605.0503(3) caps what § 56.29(6) can reach against an LLC interest, are both correct; they govern different property.

Proceedings Supplementary in Federal Court

A Florida proceeding supplementary that seeks to impose new liability on new parties is a removable civil action, while a proceeding that only claws back a fraudulently transferred asset sits within the federal court’s ancillary jurisdiction over its own judgment.

Jackson-Platts v. General Electric Capital Corp., 727 F.3d 1127 (11th Cir. 2013). Leading case. When a proceeding supplementary seeks “to impose new liability on new parties founded on wholly new legal theories,” it is a removable “civil action” under 28 U.S.C. § 1441 rather than an ancillary proceeding. The estate’s proceeding qualified: two parties never served in the underlying tort case were sued on an asset-stripping conspiracy theory unconnected to the nursing-home negligence claim, and Colorado River abstention did not justify remand.

National Maritime Services, Inc. v. Straub, 776 F.3d 783 (11th Cir. 2015). A federal court has ancillary jurisdiction over a Rule 69(a) proceeding supplementary brought to void a debtor’s fraudulent transfer and disgorge the asset, because that enforces the court’s own judgment rather than imposing the judgment itself on a third party. The transferee “is not personally liable for the judgment”; his liability is limited to the proceeds fraudulently transferred to him, and if those are worth less than the judgment the creditor has no recourse for the excess.

Estate of Jackson v. Ventas Realty, Ltd. Partnership, 812 F. Supp. 2d 1306 (M.D. Fla. 2011). A § 56.29 proceeding may be begun only in the court that rendered the judgment and issued the execution. The proceeding “contemplates no complaint, no cause of action, no counter-claim,” and “no personal judgment against an impleaded party,” so an impleaded party may not counterclaim and no jury right attaches. The court also remanded the proceeding as non-removable, a ruling the Eleventh Circuit did not follow in Jackson-Platts, which controls.

The Debtor’s Fifth Amendment Privilege

Florida’s proceedings-supplementary statute says a debtor may not refuse an answer because it would show a fraudulent transfer, but Florida courts hold its immunity too narrow to remove the Fifth Amendment privilege, so a debtor may invoke it question by question.

Novak v. Snieda, 659 So. 2d 1138 (Fla. 2d DCA 1995). Leading case. Section 56.29’s immunity is use immunity but not derivative-use immunity, and so “cannot overcome a judgment debtor’s Fifth Amendment rights”; an order compelling the debtor to answer every question was reversed. The creditor certifies each question the debtor refuses, and the court rules on each after a hearing. A civil contempt order may not jail the debtor automatically for future noncompliance without a further hearing and an ability-to-comply finding, and it must contain a purge provision.

Section 56.29(5) is the immunity provision: it bars use of the answer against the debtor in a criminal proceeding and nothing more. Disobeying an order or subpoena in the proceeding is contempt under § 56.29(7).

Compton v. Societe Eurosuisse, S.A., 494 F. Supp. 836 (S.D. Fla. 1980). The federal precursor of Novak. Florida’s proceedings-supplementary immunity provision grants use immunity only; it bars use of the answer as evidence in a criminal case but places no restriction on the fruits of the testimony. Because the Fifth Amendment requires both use and derivative-use immunity, the statute cannot displace the privilege, and a judgment debtor facing a reasonable probability of prosecution may refuse to answer. The sentence construed, then numbered § 56.29(8), appears verbatim as the current § 56.29(5).

Property Held Outside Florida

A Florida court with personal jurisdiction over a judgment debtor can order him to act on property anywhere, because the order binds the person and contempt against the person enforces it. The Florida Supreme Court settled the question in 2022, and the rule it adopted had already been applied by the First and Third Districts.

Sargeant v. Al-Saleh, 137 So. 3d 432 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014). Disapproved in part by Shim v. Buechel (Fla. 2022). The Fourth District reversed an order, entered on a $28.8 million judgment, compelling judgment debtors to turn over stock certificates for foreign entities with assets in the Bahamas, the Netherlands, Jordan, the Isle of Man, and the Dominican Republic. Florida courts, it reasoned, have no jurisdiction over property outside the state, and compelling a debtor to bring out-of-state assets into Florida “would effectively eviscerate the domestication of foreign judgment statutes.”

Schanck v. Gayhart, 245 So. 3d 970 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018). Personal jurisdiction over the debtor sufficed to order him to return or reissue stock and membership certificates he had moved to Canada, because neither remedy affected title while they remained there. He owned both Florida entities outright and first denied knowing where the certificates were. Section 678.1121(5) lets a court order certificates cancelled and reissued “regardless of whether securities cannot be seized because their location is unknown or because the debtor has attempted to move them outside the court’s reach.”

Shim v. Buechel, 339 So. 3d 315 (Fla. 2022). Leading case. Section 56.29(6) lets a court with personal jurisdiction over a judgment debtor order him to act on property outside Florida. The debtor kept roughly $4 million in a safe at his South Korean home as a negotiable instrument on a Korean bank; the trial court had found it lacked jurisdiction to compel him, and the Fifth District reversed. The Court approved the Fifth District’s decision and disapproved Sargeant in part, adding that the authority “extends no further than the trial court’s personal jurisdiction.”

What the creditor seeks	Allowed?	Authority
A freeze on a defendant’s assets before judgment on a money-damages claim (federal court)	No	Grupo Mexicano (U.S. 1999)
A prejudgment injunction against disposing of an asset, on a fraudulent-transfer claim	Yes	§ 726.108(1)(c)1.
An order that the debtor act on property he controls outside Florida	Yes	§ 56.29(6); Shim (Fla. 2022)
An order against a judgment debtor over whom the court has no personal jurisdiction	No	Shim (Fla. 2022), the stated limit
Cancellation and reissuance of certificates the debtor moved abroad	Yes	§ 678.1121(5); Schanck (Fla. 1st DCA 2018)
A money judgment under § 56.29(3) against a transferee who no longer holds the property	Split	No under McGregor (Fla. 4th DCA 2021); yes under Rosenberg (Fla. 3d DCA 2023)
An order that the debtor answer over a Fifth Amendment objection	No	Novak (Fla. 2d DCA 1995)
A judgment lien on the debtor’s accounts and payment intangibles	Yes	§ 55.202(2)
A judgment lien on the debtor’s money	No	§ 55.202(2)
A judgment lien on real property where the recorded judgment omits the creditor’s address	No	§ 55.10(1); Hott Interiors (Fla. 4th DCA 1998)
Original priority for a judgment re-recorded after its lien lapsed	No	Franklin Financial (Fla. 4th DCA 2006)
A money judgment in proceedings supplementary against a third party never impleaded and heard	No	Meyer v. Faust (Fla. 1955); Boats Express (Fla. 2d DCA 2008)
Attorney’s fees and costs against an impleaded third party	No	§ 56.29(8); Gaedeke (Fla. 4th DCA 2004)
Assignment of the debtor’s pending lawsuit to the creditor	Yes	MYD Marine (Fla. 4th DCA 2016)
A stay of a recorded out-of-state judgment without posting security	No	§ 55.509(2); SCG Travel (Fla. 4th DCA 1991)
A jurisdictional attack on a recorded out-of-state judgment after the thirty days have run	Yes	Jones v. Directors Guild (Fla. 1st DCA 1991)

A Florida resident’s interest in an offshore LLC is intangible personal property located with its owner, so Florida’s creditor remedies govern it (Wells Fargo Bank v. Barber, M.D. Fla. 2015). The only structure that places assets beyond a Florida court’s effective enforcement power is an offshore trust whose settlor has transferred legal ownership to an independent foreign trustee outside U.S. jurisdiction.

Judgment Liens on Real Property

A judgment becomes a lien on Florida land only when a certified copy carrying the judgment holder’s own address is recorded in the county where the land sits, and that lien lasts ten years, extendable once for ten more.

Under § 55.10(1), the judgment must contain the lienholder’s address, or an affidavit stating it must be recorded at the same time; without the address there is no lien. A judgment first recorded on or after July 1, 1994 is a lien for ten years from recording, § 55.10(1). Re-recording a certified copy before expiration, with a fresh affidavit stating the holder’s current address, extends the lien ten more years from the re-recording, § 55.10(2), but never past the twenty years § 55.081 allows, § 55.10(3).

The lien may be transferred from the land to a cash deposit or surety bond covering the claim plus three years’ interest and $500 in costs, § 55.10(5).

Gordon v. Ruvin, 664 So. 2d 1078 (Fla. 3d DCA 1995). An equitable lien imposed by a final judgment is a lien “claimed under” § 55.10 and may be moved onto a corporate surety bond without the lienholder’s consent; substituting regulated security is not a taking. The opinion cites the provision as § 55.10(6); it is § 55.10(5) today.

Wintter & Cummings v. Len-Hal Realty, Inc., 679 So. 2d 1224 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996). A charging lien that a final judgment created may be moved onto a bond under § 55.10 even after the notice of appeal is filed; the appeal does not strip the trial court of that power. Neither the statute nor the appellate rules require a court order for the bond to take effect.

Perfection, Levy, and Priority

Smith v. Venus Condominium Ass’n, Inc., 352 So. 2d 1169 (Fla. 1977). Leading case. Judgment liens on land are purely statutory; at common law a judgment was no lien on the debtor’s real estate. Under the statute as amended in 1972, a certified copy must be recorded even in the county where the judgment was rendered, so a creditor who recorded only the original judgment got no lien. The contrary reading in Dade Federal (Fla. 3d DCA 1969) was overruled, and the certified-copy rule applies alike to state and federal judgments.

Aquastar Holdings LLC v. Peckar & Abramson P.C., No. 3D24-0335 (Fla. 3d DCA June 18, 2025). Recording a certified copy plus a valid address affidavit is all § 55.10(1) requires to perfect a judgment lien. Omitting the statutory interest rate and the words “for which let execution issue” only stays execution until the judgment is amended, and a later nunc pro tunc amendment supplying them kept priority over a later-recorded mortgage. Priority runs by official-record sequence under § 695.11, and title taken at the execution sale relates back to the recording date.

Bond-Howell Lumber Co. v. First National Bank of Eau Gallie, 200 So. 2d 555 (Fla. 4th DCA 1967). No judgment becomes a lien until it is recorded in the judgment lien record. A judgment entered November 9, 1964, but kept in the court minute book until it reached the official records on July 14, 1965, attached subordinate to a mortgage recorded November 10, 1964.

In re Halabi, 189 B.R. 538 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 1995). Neither recording an uncertified copy nor delivering a writ of execution to the sheriff and levying short of sale creates a lien on real property; only recording a certified copy does. Nothing was perfected at the bankruptcy petition date, and the creditor’s post-petition recording of the certified copy violated the automatic stay and was avoided under 11 U.S.C. § 549.

Diaz v. Plumhoff, 742 So. 2d 846 (Fla. 2d DCA 1999). A judgment creditor must perfect a § 55.10 lien before the sheriff may levy on and sell the debtor’s land; chapter 56 governs final process, and § 56.061 only lists what property is subject to execution. The court called it a question of first impression and quieted title back to the former owner.

Lamchick, Glucksman & Johnston, P.A. v. City National Bank of Florida, 659 So. 2d 1118 (Fla. 3d DCA 1995). Priorities among judgment liens on land follow recording sequence under § 695.11, and a later creditor who alone discovered the asset and reached it through proceedings supplementary cannot leapfrog a previously recorded judgment lien. The diligent-creditor rule of Salina Manufacturing is confined to personal property.

Westport Recovery Corp. v. Smith, 830 So. 2d 226 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002). Where the original creditor properly recorded the judgment, an assignee need not re-record to keep the lien, because § 55.10(1) imposes no such requirement and the court may not expand the statute. The court advised assignees to record anyway: § 222.01(3) sends a homestead claimant’s notice to the address in the most recent recorded judgment or affidavit, so an unrecorded assignee may never learn of proceedings that could extinguish the lien.

Perrott v. Frankie, 605 So. 2d 118 (Fla. 2d DCA 1992). A judgment is no lien on land until a certified copy is recorded. The father’s quitclaim to his daughter was a fraudulent transfer, but voiding it restored the earlier joint tenancy with survivorship, so the daughter took the whole property when he died, more than a year before the creditor recorded his judgment.

Giddens v. McFarlan, 152 Fla. 281, 10 So. 2d 807 (Fla. 1943). The judgment became a lien when the certified transcript was recorded and stayed enforceable for twenty years. Purchasers and a mortgage assignee who bought years later had constructive notice and took subject to it, and laches failed because the creditor’s remedy lasted as long as the lien did. Homestead rights had never attached to the land.

National Title Co. v. Laramore, 130 Fla. 487, 178 So. 165 (Fla. 1938). A grantee who took land already subject to a recorded judgment lien took it subject to the sheriff’s sale that enforced the lien, and got no equitable lien for taxes paid on the land.

The Creditor’s Address Requirement

Hott Interiors, Inc. v. Fostock, 721 So. 2d 1236 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998). Leading case. Section 55.10(1) requires the judgment itself, or a simultaneously recorded affidavit, to state the judgment holder’s own address before the judgment becomes a lien on real estate. What a judgment must contain to become a lien is substantive law, so the requirement does not invade the supreme court’s rulemaking power. The First through Fifth Districts and the bankruptcy courts in the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida have all enforced the requirement strictly.

Gomez v. Timberoof Roofing Co., 196 So. 3d 1279 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). A creditor’s lawyer’s address entered as “c/o Gilbert & Caddy PA” did not satisfy § 55.10(1), so the recorded judgments never became liens on the unit owners’ parcels. The court refused to accept the creditor’s designation of its attorney’s address as its own and left open whether a dissolved company with no other address could ever do so.

Butler v. Butler, 870 So. 2d 239 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004). Recorded child-support and medical-expense judgments that did not carry the lienholder’s address never became liens on the husband’s half interest in the former marital residence, so the foreclosure judgment and the clerk’s sale were reversed.

Dyer v. Beverly & Tittle, P.A., 777 So. 2d 1055 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001). Two dissolution fee judgments reciting that they “shall be a lien on the former marital residence” still did not become liens, because § 55.10(1) was not complied with. The court found no authority excepting judgments that award equitable liens from the statute.

In re Jackie Johns, DMD, P.A., 267 B.R. 901 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 2001). An affidavit of lienholder recorded thirty days after the certified judgment is not “simultaneously recorded,” and the two entries sitting one apart in the county index did not make the failure harmless; the attorney’s address does not substitute either. Bankruptcy judges have no more power than anyone else to read past a statute’s plain language to reach an equitable result.

Farkus v. Florida Land Sales and Development Co., 915 So. 2d 688 (Fla. 5th DCA 2005). A default judgment carrying no address for the original creditor never became a lien, and the assignee could not cure that with her own address on the assignment papers; an assignee takes the assignor’s rights subject to every burden the assignor carried. In a footnote the court described the cure that Clinton v. Doehla later applied: re-record the judgment with a simultaneous address affidavit, effective from the re-recording forward and not relating back.

Clinton v. Doehla, 933 So. 2d 1215 (Fla. 3d DCA 2006). An address defect can be cured by re-recording a certified copy with a simultaneous affidavit, but the cure runs forward only and does not relate back. Two 2002 attempts failed, one lacking the creditor’s address and the other uncertified, and the corrected recording came the evening before the sale, so the levy published the previous October rested on no perfected lien and the sale was vacated.

In re Lee, 223 B.R. 594 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 1998). A bank’s December 6, 1996 recording created no lien because the certified copy carried no address for the bank; the lien was invalid until January 27, 1997, when the bank recorded an affidavit stating its principal place of business. The debtor established homestead on December 20, 1996, inside that window, so the homestead vested free of the lien, and the creditor’s earlier lis pendens did not help, because a lis pendens neither creates nor enforces a lien.

Which Judgments Create a Lien

In re Walsh, 123 B.R. 925 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 1991). A probate order titled “final judgment” that directed the personal representative to return $700,000 pending a later ruling on his fee entitlement was interlocutory, so recording a certified copy created no § 55.10 lien and the bank’s later mortgage was superior. Where a judgment is not indexed under a person’s name because that name is absent from the caption, a party may rely on a properly conducted record search that fails to show it.

Snoddy v. NCNB National Bank of Florida, 575 So. 2d 231 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991). An order awarding attorney’s fees was not a recordable instrument under §§ 28.29 and 55.10, so recording it was a nullity and created no judgment lien; the fee claimant had no claim to the receivership funds left after the foreclosure sale.

In re Coleman, 192 B.R. 268 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 1995). A dissolution judgment’s $40,000 attorney’s fee award, payable in $2,500 quarterly installments over four years, was not a final, executable money judgment, so recording the judgment created no § 55.10 lien. Alimony and child support are inherently modifiable and cannot support a lien either, and the “Final Judgment” label proves nothing about finality.

Perez v. Pearl, 411 So. 2d 972 (Fla. 3d DCA 1982). A judgment establishing liability but fixing no monetary amount of damages “is simply an expectancy” and not a lien under § 55.10. The bankruptcy court applied the same rule in In re Wald, 248 B.R. 642 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 1998), to a 1973 dissolution judgment that merely promised the former wife half the proceeds if the husband ever sold his interest. The same court added that § 55.081 ends any lien twenty years after entry.

Sanchez v. Black, Srebnick, Kornspan & Stumpf, P.A., 911 So. 2d 201 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005). A recorded mortgage that ripens into a final judgment of foreclosure is a pre-existing specific lien, not the “judgment lien” § 55.10 contemplates, so § 55.10 compliance was not needed before the law firm could share in the condemnation proceeds. The court quoted Nassau Realty Co. v. City of Jacksonville, 144 Fla. 754, 198 So. 581 (Fla. 1940): the statute’s predecessor attaches liens where no statutory or contract lien already existed and leaves liens merged into a judgment alone.

Florida Brewing Co. v. Sendoya, 73 Fla. 660, 74 So. 799 (Fla. 1917). Where a partnership judgment rested on service made on one partner only, it was a lien on the partnership lands and that partner’s own lands, but not on the unserved partner’s individual lands.

Newton v. Bryan, 142 Fla. 14, 194 So. 282 (Fla. 1940). A judgment against a nonresident who was served only constructively and never appeared bound only property he owned inside Florida; a suit to impose and foreclose a lien on described Florida land was such an in rem claim. Decided in 1940 under Pennoyer v. Neff; the current jurisdictional test is not stated.

Duration, Lapse, and Re-recording

Franklin Financial, Inc. v. White, 932 So. 2d 434 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006). A judgment creditor may re-record a judgment even after the original lien has expired, but the consequences differ. Extending a lien before it lapses, § 55.10(2), preserves the original priority, while letting it lapse and re-recording later creates a new lien that ranks behind every lien already recorded. A re-recorded lien attaches only to property the debtor holds at that time, not property transferred while the lien was lapsed.

Sun Glow Construction, Inc. v. Cypress Recovery Corp., 47 So. 3d 371 (Fla. 5th DCA 2010). Answering a certified question, the Fifth District held that re-recording a certified copy after the original lien has expired imposes a new lien on real property the judgment debtor holds. A 1990 recording that expired in 1997 and was re-recorded in 2000 reached property the debtor acquired in 2004 and later sold; the court expressly agreed with Franklin Financial.

In re Cannon, 568 B.R. 859 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2016). A Florida judgment lien created by recording under § 55.10 is a general lien: it reaches property owned when the lien is recorded and property acquired afterward while the judgment lives. The lien keeps its effect until satisfied or expired even if the property is later transferred to a third party.

B. A. Lott, Inc. v. Padgett, 153 Fla. 304, 14 So. 2d 667 (Fla. 1943). A United States District Court judgment becomes and ceases to be a lien on Florida land just as a state judgment does, so a federal deficiency decree was a lien for twenty years and reached land the debtor acquired eight years later. Failing to sue out execution within three years suspended only the right to enforce until scire facias restored it. The decision predates the 1967 statute; today a recorded certified copy is required for state and federal judgments alike.

Orr v. Allen-Hanford, Inc., 158 Fla. 34, 27 So. 2d 823 (Fla. 1946). Judgment creditors omitted from a foreclosure who waited some seventeen years, while the land was platted and sold and homes were built, could be met by equitable defenses that cut off enforcement. “Appellants may satisfy their judgments within twenty years, but, when undue delays are exercised without reason shown therefor, equitable defenses become available that may cut off the right to satisfy the judgment.”

What a Judgment Lien Reaches

Hull v. Maryland Casualty Co., 79 So. 2d 517 (Fla. 1954). Leading case. A judgment lien attaches only to land the judgment debtor owns; where record title is in the debtor but equitable title is in someone else, that person prevails unless estopped. Under equitable conversion, an agreement to convey makes the buyer beneficial owner and leaves the seller a naked legal title no judgment lien can reach. On rehearing the Court held that § 695.01 protects only creditors without notice, and recorded assignments of the agreement for deed gave this creditor notice.

Decisions applying the Hull rule. A judgment lien reaches only the debtor’s beneficial interest, so a transfer recorded before the judgment defeats the lien. In Michaels v. Albert Pick & Co., 158 Fla. 877, 30 So. 2d 498 (Fla. 1947), a recorded, fully paid agreement for deed left the vendor a bare legal title the lien could not reach. In Allender v. First Federal Savings & Loan Ass’n, 389 So. 2d 1226 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980), fact questions on the timing of deeds and an assignment barred summary judgment for the creditor.

Aetna Insurance Co. v. LaGasse, 223 So. 2d 727 (Fla. 1969). A vested remainder is an interest in real estate to which a previously recorded judgment lien attaches immediately, and a homestead claim cannot attach to a future interest that lacks present possession. A life tenant’s consent to the remainderman’s occupancy does not divest the life tenant’s superior present interest.

Bendl v. Bendl, 246 So. 2d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 1971). An alimony money judgment recorded against the husband after the property became his homestead was no lien on it, because a judgment is not a lien on homestead. When he died, the undivided half he had conveyed to himself and his second wife as tenants by the entireties vested wholly in her, so her interest could not answer his individual judgment debts.

Jones v. McKinney, 341 So. 3d 360 (Fla. 2d DCA 2022). A recorded judgment is a general lien on whatever land the debtor owns in the county, not a lien encumbering specific property, so the probate code’s exception for mortgages, security interests, and liens on specific property does not cover it. A creditor holding a $2.2 million judgment against a decedent’s estate therefore could not execute on the estate’s only asset ahead of its statutory claim priority, and the probate court could not use equity to reorder the priorities.

Judgment Liens on Personal Property

A judgment lien certificate filed with the Florida Department of State creates a lien on the debtor’s non-exempt personal property, including payment intangibles and accounts but excluding money, and the lien lapses after five years unless renewed.

Section 55.202(2) reaches personal property subject to execution under § 56.061, plus payment intangibles and accounts as § 679.1021(1) defines them and their proceeds, but excludes fixtures, money, negotiable instruments, and mortgages. A secured party whose financing statement was filed first takes priority, § 55.202(2)(a)1., and a buyer in the ordinary course takes free of the lien even knowing of it, § 55.205(2).

An account debtor may keep paying the judgment debtor until served with a complaint or petition; after that, only a settlement agreement, final order, or judgment tells him whom to pay, § 55.205(7). The lien lapses five years after filing and may be renewed once for a further five, § 55.204(1), (3). It is enforced only through judicial process such as execution, garnishment, a charging order, or proceedings supplementary, § 55.205(6).

Separately, a writ of execution delivered to the sheriff creates a common-law lien on the debtor’s personal property in that county; the judgment lien certificate is a different mechanism.

In re Belize Airways Ltd., 19 B.R. 840 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 1982), and 20 B.R. 817 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 1982). Recording a judgment creates no lien on personal property; Florida follows the common-law rule that an execution lien on personalty arises when the writ is delivered to that county’s sheriff, and among successive writs the first delivered ordinarily takes priority. The bankruptcy trustee’s status as of the petition date therefore beat a creditor who never delivered a writ and one who delivered it only after the petition.

Sun Bank, N.A. v. Snell (In re Cone), 11 B.R. 925 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 1981). A lien on a judgment debtor’s personal property arises when the writ of execution reaches the sheriff of the county where the property sits; no levy is needed, and the lien covers personalty then owned or later acquired there. No writ, docketed with a sheriff or the United States Marshal, creates a lien on an aircraft covered by 49 U.S.C. § 1403; actual seizure or attachment is required, since the federal registration scheme allows no lien that attaches without notice.

United States v. Gurley, 415 F.2d 144 (5th Cir. 1969). Recording the judgment created a lien on all the debtor’s county real estate, and the writ’s delivery to the sheriff created an execution lien on all his leviable property, personalty included. Neither lien reaches entireties property, because neither spouse holds a separate interest; only when divorce converted the tenancy into a tenancy in common under § 689.15 did each spouse’s separate interest become liable for individual debts.

Michel v. American Fire & Casualty Co., 82 F.2d 583 (5th Cir. 1936). A money judgment against an insured is no lien on the insurer’s debt to him, so until garnished the insured may collect or compromise that claim in good faith. His $1,000 cash release of a matured $6,200 policy claim, made just after verdicts were entered and with a secret side benefit, carried several badges of fraud and raised a jury question whether the compromise was collusive.

Out-of-State and Foreign Judgments

Recording an out-of-state judgment in Florida gives the creditor Florida’s twenty-year enforcement period, but the twenty years run from the day the original judgment was entered, so recording restarts nothing.

Under the Florida Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act, §§ 55.501–55.509, the creditor records a certified copy of the judgment with the clerk plus an affidavit identifying both the judgment debtor and the judgment creditor, §§ 55.503(1), 55.505(1). Execution cannot begin until 30 days after the clerk mails notice to the debtor, § 55.505(3).

A debtor who, within 30 days after recording, files an action contesting the rendering court’s jurisdiction or the judgment’s validity and records a lis pendens obtains a stay, § 55.509(1). The court may also stay enforcement on any ground that would stay a Florida judgment, § 55.509(2), and either way the debtor must post the security that subsection requires.

Patrick v. Hess, 212 So. 3d 1039 (Fla. 2017). Leading case. A judgment recorded under the Florida Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act is enforced under Florida’s twenty-year period, § 95.11(1), rather than the rendering state’s, and Haigh and Friona were disapproved.

Hess v. Patrick, 164 So. 3d 19 (Fla. 2d DCA 2015). The twenty years run from the date the original judgment was entered rather than from the Florida recording, and the Supreme Court later left the point open. Section 55.081 likewise says no judgment remains a lien more than twenty years from its entry.

Nadd v. Le Credit Lyonnais, S.A., 804 So. 2d 1226 (Fla. 2001). For a judgment from a foreign country, Florida’s recognition act, §§ 55.601–55.607, imposes one limit: the judgment must be “final and conclusive and enforceable where rendered,” § 55.603, so Florida’s own limitations period cannot bar recognition. Once recognized, the judgment is enforced like a Florida judgment, so § 95.11(1)’s twenty years govern rather than § 95.11(2)(a)’s five. Two French judgments from 1978 and 1979, still alive under France’s thirty-year period, were recorded in Orange County in 1994 and 1995.

Michael v. Valley Trucking Co., 832 So. 2d 213 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002). Recording a foreign judgment under the Act is not an “action on a judgment,” so the five-year period in § 95.11(2)(a) does not reach it, and nothing in the Act limits how many times a judgment may be recorded. The only condition is that the judgment still be enforceable where rendered. Recording starts no new clock: once registered the judgment is a Florida judgment, and § 55.081’s twenty years run from the date the judgment was entered.

In re Mead, 374 B.R. 296 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2007). An out-of-state federal judgment registered in a Florida federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1963 and then recorded in the county became a § 55.10 lien on Florida land; registration and the Act are alternative routes. Section 55.10 requires the creditor’s address, not the debtor’s, so errors in the debtor’s address do not affect the lien.

Weiss v. Weiss, 100 So. 3d 1220 (Fla. 2d DCA 2012). Full faith and credit obliges Florida courts to enforce the contempt feature of a domesticated Illinois money judgment, even though an equivalent Florida judgment could not be enforced by contempt. Domestication confers no new rights but supplies a forum for rights the rendering court already gave. Interest runs at the rendering state’s statutory rate from entry until domestication and at Florida’s rate thereafter.

Contesting a Foreign Judgment in Florida

A judgment debtor may attack a recorded out-of-state judgment only for want of jurisdiction in the rendering court or for extrinsic fraud, and § 55.509’s thirty-day window governs only stays, so letting it pass forfeits no defense.

The Thirty-Day Window

Jones v. Directors Guild of America, Inc., 584 So. 2d 1057 (Fla. 1st DCA 1991). Leading case. The Act nowhere provides that a collateral attack must be brought within thirty days or be forever barred. The window in § 55.509 buys a stay, and if the debtor lets it pass the only consequence is that the creditor may enforce and the judgment operates as a lien. The debtor may still attack the judgment afterward, and a quiet-title suit is a proper vehicle.

Nichols v. Nichols, 613 So. 2d 137 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993). A debtor who lets the thirty days run may still attack the foreign judgment for extrinsic fraud, but chapter 55 gives him no “responsive pleading” to file, and recording a foreign judgment produces no Florida default to set aside. Because his attack came after the thirty days it did not stay enforcement, so no bond was required; the § 55.509(2) security question arises only when a stay is sought and granted.

Default Judgments and Personal Jurisdiction

Whipple v. JSZ Financial Co., 885 So. 2d 933 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004). Letting § 55.509’s thirty days pass did not waive the debtor’s right to attack a foreign default judgment; the thirty-day period governs only stays. Because she never appeared in Texas, she could raise its lack of personal jurisdiction in the Florida enforcement proceeding. The process server’s authorization had expired on the face of his order, and a return amended two years later could not cure it under Texas’s strict service rules, so the judgment was void and the domestication fell with it.

Credit Counseling Foundation, Inc. v. Hylkema, 901 So. 2d 892 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005). A corporation hit with a Washington default judgment was entitled to a ruling on the merits of its § 55.509(1) contest. A defendant that never appeared, answered, or contested jurisdiction in the rendering court may contest that court’s personal jurisdiction at enforcement, so dismissing the contest without reaching the merits was error.

Williams v. Cadlerock Joint Venture, L.P., 980 So. 2d 1241 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), review denied, 994 So. 2d 1104 (Fla. 2008). A foreign judgment need not be recognized if the rendering court lacked personal jurisdiction. The person served in New York was a woman of that name, and the Florida defendant was a man who was never served, so the judgment could not be domesticated against him. A defendant who had no opportunity to contest jurisdiction may raise it at enforcement, and § 55.509(1) does not require the attack within thirty days.

System One Southeast, Inc. v. Avery Dennison Corp., 704 So. 2d 665 (Fla. 2d DCA 1997). A letter the corporation’s non-lawyer president sent the Ohio court saying the creditor had sued the wrong entity was not an “appearance,” because a corporation cannot appear except through counsel, so it waived no objection to personal jurisdiction. Whether the buyer “transacted business” under Ohio’s long-arm statute and whether minimum contacts existed were disputed fact questions; a passive buyer that merely phoned in orders and paid for shipped goods is generally not subject to the seller’s forum.

When the Debtor Appeared in the Rendering Court

Tipton v. Van Schouwen, 526 So. 2d 138 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988). The debtor’s Texas lawyer moved to set aside the interlocutory default and sought a merits trial, then failed to appear and never appealed. The Texas court thereby acquired personal jurisdiction, and its express jurisdictional findings were res judicata and closed to collateral attack in Florida. A rendering-state judgment entered while a parallel federal action was pending binds regardless of which suit was filed first, no stay having been sought.

Cutler v. Harrison, 792 So. 2d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2001). The Act does not require the creditor to file a civil action: the creditor records the judgment, and any litigation over its validity is the debtor’s to start under §§ 55.505 and 55.509. Where the creditor nonetheless proceeded by civil action, the unappealed domestication order was res judicata and barred the debtor’s later declaratory action raising the same defenses; the bar reaches only a second suit.

What the Florida Court Reviews

Pratt v. Equity Bank, N.A., 124 So. 3d 313 (Fla. 5th DCA 2013). Leading case. Service of process is not required before a Florida court enforces a recorded foreign judgment against the judgment debtor; the recording and mailed-notice procedure of §§ 55.503 and 55.505 suffices, and the recorded judgment carries the same effect as a Florida judgment. A debtor who wants to dispute the foreign judgment must himself file the § 55.509(1) action; the creditor need not file a new lawsuit.

New v. Bennett, 249 So. 3d 704 (Fla. 1st DCA 2018). On a petition to record and enforce a foreign judgment, the debtor may contest only the rendering court’s jurisdiction or extrinsic fraud. The Florida court may not retry the foreign court’s findings of fact or review the underlying cause of action, validity is judged under the foreign state’s law, and the burden is the debtor’s.

Conidaris Construction Co. v. First Atlantic Savings, 572 So. 2d 27 (Fla. 2d DCA 1990). The Act’s domestication procedure is constitutional and its notice-to-the-debtor provisions satisfy due process, so a complaint to bar enforcement was properly dismissed with prejudice.

Gil de Lamadrid v. De Jesus Rivera, 272 So. 3d 845 (Fla. 5th DCA 2019). A judgment lienholder that never sought to intervene in the foreign proceeding cannot intervene for the first time in the Florida action domesticating the resulting judgment. Intervention is for pending litigation and is generally too late after final judgment, so the order granting it was quashed on certiorari; the lienholder also had no standing to complain that the § 55.505(2) notice never reached another party.

Stays and Bonds Under Section 55.509

A debtor who contests a recorded out-of-state judgment under § 55.509 gets no stay of enforcement without posting the security a Florida judgment debtor would have to post, unless the judgment is already stayed where it was rendered.

SCG Travel, Inc. v. Westminster Financial Corp., 583 So. 2d 723 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991). Leading case. Section 55.509(1) provides no stay without security. Subsection (2) covers every ground on which a Florida judgment could be stayed, supersedeas and stays pending review included, so its security requirement attaches to a stay obtained by filing a subsection (1) contest. An unconditional stay would give the debtor more rights in Florida than the rendering state gives him and the creditor fewer, which full faith and credit does not allow.

Community Builders, Inc. v. Indian Motorcycle Associates, Inc., 658 So. 2d 146 (Fla. 3d DCA 1995). Execution on a recorded Massachusetts judgment was properly stayed with no supersedeas bond while the Massachusetts appeal ran, because that appeal automatically stayed execution there too. Full faith and credit gives a sister-state judgment neither more nor less effect than the rendering state gives it; the creditor is “entitled in Florida to 100% of the faith and credit due to the Massachusetts judgment, but not 150%.”

Expedia, Inc. v. McKenney’s, Inc., 611 So. 2d 98 (Fla. 1st DCA 1992). The First District adopted SCG Travel: a debtor who files a § 55.509(1) validity challenge must furnish the security subsection (2) describes, and dismissing his complaint when he let the ten-day bond deadline pass was no abuse of discretion. The Expedia here is a Florida corporation unrelated to the travel company.

Jackson v. Alexander, 706 So. 2d 364 (Fla. 1st DCA 1998). A debtor’s § 55.509 action was ineffective and subject to dismissal because he did not post bond, so the trial court did not depart from the essential requirements of law in letting the creditor proceed.

Walters v. Aquatic Sensors Corp., 633 So. 2d 475 (Fla. 1st DCA 1994). The grounds for staying enforcement of a recorded foreign judgment are not limited to the two named in § 55.509(1). Read with § 55.509(2), the Act lets a debtor show any ground on which a Florida judgment would be stayed, here partial satisfaction, and such an equitable ground ordinarily requires a hearing. Summary denial without a hearing denied due process; on remand a supersedeas bond would protect the creditor, but inability to post full security would not cost the debtor the hearing.

Foreign Judgment Notice and Priority

A recorded out-of-state judgment takes its lien priority from the date of recording even though enforcement must wait out the thirty days after the clerk mails notice, and a debtor who never received that notice is entitled to have the window reinstated.

Dollar Savings and Trust Co. v. Soltesiz, 636 So. 2d 63 (Fla. 2d DCA 1994). Leading case. The priority of a foreign judgment’s lien is fixed the moment the judgment is recorded under § 55.503, even though enforcement must wait out the thirty-day hiatus or any § 55.509 action. A mortgage the debtors signed eight days after recording was junior. Section 55.507’s “operate as a lien” speaks to enforcement, not to the lien’s creation; any other reading would let the debtor set priorities among his creditors by choosing whether to file a contest.

Cruz v. Desert Palace, Inc., 770 So. 2d 306 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000). Where the clerk’s registered-mail notice went to a wrong address the creditor supplied and came back undelivered, and the creditor never sent the alternative notice § 55.505(2) permits, the debtor never received the prescribed notice. Letting enforcement proceed was error, and he was entitled to have the thirty-day window to challenge the judgment reinstated.

In re Goodwin, 325 B.R. 328 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2005). One § 55.505(1) affidavit naming the date of the first Maine judgment, with registered copies of both the Maine state-court and Maine bankruptcy judgments attached, satisfied the statute; nothing requires a separate affidavit per judgment. The court also held that a judgment domesticated by recording is enforceable for Florida’s twenty years under § 95.11(1), the result the Florida Supreme Court later reached in Patrick v. Hess.

Haigh v. Planning Board of the Town of Medfield, 940 So. 2d 1230 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006). Disapproved on other grounds by Patrick v. Hess (Fla. 2017). Entering a “Final Judgment Establishing Foreign Judgment” with no hearing on the debtor’s answer and affirmative defenses denied him due process. The creditor had invited the error by suing rather than recording, and the debtor’s answer signalled the same intent as a statutory contest. Patrick v. Hess disapproved the statement that a domesticated judgment keeps the rendering state’s limitations period; the § 95.11(2)(a) time bar stands.

Involuntary Bankruptcy Petitions

An involuntary bankruptcy petition that fails exposes the petitioning creditor to the debtor’s costs or attorney’s fees without a bad-faith finding, and to compensatory and punitive damages with one; the award is an ordinary money judgment when it meets Florida’s homestead exemption.

Under 11 U.S.C. § 303(b), three creditors must join the petition when the debtor has twelve or more qualifying creditors, counting out employees, insiders, and recipients of voidable transfers, and one creditor suffices when there are fewer. On a dismissal other than by consent, § 303(i)(1) allows judgment for costs or a reasonable attorney’s fee, and § 303(i)(2) adds compensatory and punitive damages when the petitioner filed in bad faith.

In re Cannon Express Corp., 280 B.R. 450 (Bankr. W.D. Ark. 2002). An Arkansas bankruptcy court, whose decision does not bind Florida courts, found bad faith where creditors filed an involuntary petition to coerce payment rather than for a proper bankruptcy purpose. The debtor recovered $14,230 in compensatory damages, an early-withdrawal penalty its bank charged because of the filing, and $15,000 in punitive damages.

In re Adell, 321 B.R. 562 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2005). A § 303(i) sanctions award is only a money judgment and does not defeat Florida’s constitutional homestead exemption. A Michigan bankruptcy court had sanctioned one petitioning creditor, Kevin Adell, $6,413,230.68 for a bad-faith involuntary petition in In re John Richards Homes Building Co. (Bankr. E.D. Mich. 2003), and two weeks later he bought a $2.8 million Naples home. The Florida bankruptcy court held the Michigan order neither binding nor res judicata, found Adell a bona fide Florida resident, and declared the Naples home exempt.

The planning guidance on collecting a judgment, and on protecting assets from collection, is on the Florida judgment collection page.