Post-Judgment Interest in Florida

Post-judgment interest in Florida accrues on every money judgment from the date of entry until the judgment is paid. Florida’s Chief Financial Officer sets the rate quarterly under § 55.03. For the quarter that began July 1, 2026, the rate is 8.06% a year. Interest can run for as long as 20 years, the life of a Florida judgment.

Florida judgment interest is simple interest. It accrues on the judgment amount each day at the daily rate the Chief Financial Officer publishes. Interest that goes unpaid is not added to the principal, so the balance grows in a straight line. Published rates have run between 4.25% and 9.50% since 2013, following Federal Reserve policy with a lag.

How Is the Post-Judgment Interest Rate Set?

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer publishes the statutory rate four times per year (on December 1, March 1, June 1, and September 1) for the following calendar quarter. The formula averages the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s discount rate over the preceding 12 months and adds 400 basis points. When the Federal Reserve raises or lowers rates, the Florida judgment interest rate follows with a built-in delay.

A contract that sets an interest rate on the underlying debt does not set the rate on a judgment entered on that debt. The Florida Supreme Court held in Whitehurst v. Camp (1997) that the contract rate ends at judgment, because the debt merges into the judgment and the judgment is a separate obligation. A note that charges interest until the money is paid does not carry its rate past entry.

Section 55.03 does let the parties fix the post-judgment rate by agreement, but only if the contract says expressly that the agreed rate applies to a judgment or decree entered on the debt. Absent that language, the statutory rate governs the judgment no matter what rate the underlying note or credit agreement charged.

The Chief Financial Officer publishes three figures for each quarter: the rate per annum, the same rate stated as a daily percentage, and the daily rate as a decimal. The daily decimal is the figure a calculation actually uses. For the quarter that began July 1, 2026, it is .000220822.

How Post-Judgment Interest Adjusts Over Time

Whether a Florida judgment carries a fixed rate or a rate that changes each year depends on when the judgment was entered. Two amendments to § 55.03, one effective October 1998 and the other effective July 1, 2011, set the dividing lines.

Before October 1998. The rate on an existing judgment moved whenever the statutory rate moved, under a common-law rule Florida followed until 1998. From October 1981 through December 1994 that rate was 12% a year, and the Comptroller began setting it annually in 1995. No judgment from this period is still within its 20-year life.

October 1998 through June 2011. A 1998 amendment to § 55.03 provided that the rate established when a judgment was obtained would remain the same until the judgment was paid. The Florida Supreme Court held in Townsend v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (2016) that this created a vested right, so the later switch to annual adjustment cannot be applied to a judgment entered in this window. A judgment entered in 2010 at 6% still accrues at 6% today.

July 2011 to present. Chapter 2011-169 replaced the fixed rate with an annual adjustment. The rate is set when the judgment is obtained, using the rate in effect that quarter. It then adjusts every January 1 to the rate the Chief Financial Officer has established for that date. Judgments the clerk enters under §§ 55.141, 61.14, 938.29, and 938.30 are excepted and keep their original rate.

In Precision Diagnostic, Inc. v. Progressive American Insurance Co. (2021), the Fourth District rejected the argument that a judgment rate adjusts every quarter. The Chief Financial Officer sets a new rate each quarter, but § 55.03 provides only for an already established rate to adjust on January 1.

Judgment entered	Rate behavior	Example
Before October 1998	Moved with each statutory rate change	12% until December 1994
October 1998 to June 2011	Fixed at entry, unchanged (Townsend)	A 2010 judgment stays at 6%
July 2011 to present	Set at entry, adjusts every January 1	9.46% in 2024, then 9.38%

How to Calculate Interest on a Florida Judgment

Post-judgment interest is calculated day by day. The judgment amount is multiplied by the daily rate decimal, then by the number of days that have run. For example, suppose a creditor holds a $200,000 judgment carrying the 8.06% rate. At the published daily decimal of .000220822, the judgment accrues $44.16 a day. Thirty days of delay add about $1,325 to what the debtor owes.

For judgments entered on or after July 1, 2011, interest must be tracked year by year. The initial rate runs from the date of entry through December 31, and a new rate takes effect the following January 1. Each January 1 reset uses the quarterly rate the Chief Financial Officer published for that date. A judgment entered in August 2024 carried 9.46%. The rate dropped to 9.38% on January 1, 2025, and again to 8.44% on January 1, 2026.

Section 55.03 says nothing about rounding. Carrying the full decimal through each annual segment and rounding only the final total avoids a discrepancy that grows with the size of the judgment.

How Partial Payments Are Applied

When a debtor makes a partial payment on a judgment, the money goes first to the interest that has accrued and only then to principal. Florida adopted that common-law rule in 1849, and the Fifth District applied it to unpaid child support in Vitt v. Rodriguez (2007). A contract or statute directing a different order controls where one exists.

If a payment does not cover the interest that has accrued, the shortfall is set aside rather than added to principal. The next payment picks it up. That is why Florida judgment interest never compounds, and why early payments on a long-unpaid judgment can leave the principal exactly where it was.

Federal Judgments Accrue Interest at a Lower Rate

Judgments entered in federal court run at a lower rate than Florida judgments. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1961, the rate is the weekly average one-year constant maturity Treasury yield published by the Federal Reserve for the calendar week before the judgment date. That yield sat near 4% in late August 2026, about half the Florida rate for the same period.

The federal rate is fixed when the judgment is entered and never adjusts, so a federal judgment entered while Treasury yields are low carries that low rate for its entire life. Federal interest is computed daily and compounded annually, while Florida judgment interest stays simple for the life of the judgment.

A debtor carrying both a state and a federal judgment faces two different clocks. The Florida rate comes off the Federal Reserve discount rate plus 400 basis points; the federal rate comes off the one-year Treasury yield with nothing added. Which judgment is worth settling first usually turns on which one is growing faster.

Prejudgment Interest vs. Post-Judgment Interest

Prejudgment interest compensates the plaintiff for the delay between the loss and the judgment. The Florida Supreme Court held in Argonaut Insurance Co. v. May Plumbing Co. (1985) that once a verdict fixes an out-of-pocket pecuniary loss as of a date, the plaintiff is entitled to prejudgment interest at the statutory rate. Neither entitlement nor rate is left to the trial judge. Awards for personal injury carry no prejudgment interest.

Once a final judgment is entered, post-judgment interest takes over and runs automatically. Section 55.03 requires a money judgment to show the interest rate on its face. The same applies to any writ sent to a sheriff for execution, and a sheriff need not docket, index, or collect on a writ that omits the rate. A reference to the statutory rate counts.

Post-judgment interest runs on the whole judgment, prejudgment interest included. The Florida Supreme Court held in Quality Engineered Installation, Inc. v. Higley South, Inc. (1996) that prejudgment interest becomes part of a single total sum adjudged to be due. Like every other component of the judgment, it then bears interest under § 55.03, and so do the costs and attorney fees the judgment awards.

Interest and Settlement Strategy

Post-judgment interest creates financial pressure on both sides of a settlement negotiation. The debtor watches the judgment grow by tens of dollars daily for every $100,000 owed. Interest continues accruing even while the debtor claims exemptions or contests collection efforts.

The interest clock cuts both ways. A creditor holding an uncollectable judgment watches the nominal balance grow while receiving nothing. If the debtor’s assets are largely exempt (protected by homestead, head-of-household wages, retirement accounts, or tenants by entireties ownership), the creditor can collect little of the growing interest balance.

A debtor whose assets are well protected can offer a lump-sum settlement that gives the creditor an immediate, certain recovery. The creditor’s alternative is continuing to hold a judgment that keeps getting bigger but never turns into money.

Exempt assets stay beyond the creditor’s reach no matter how large the judgment grows.

When Post-Judgment Interest Stops Accruing

Post-judgment interest stops when the judgment is paid in full, when a bankruptcy discharge wipes out the debtor’s personal liability, or when the judgment passes its 20-year mark. Two statutes produce that outer limit. Section 95.11 caps an action on the judgment at 20 years, and § 55.081 ends the lien a judgment creditor records once the same 20 years have run.

A debtor who pays the full amount with interest into the court registry before the sheriff levies can have the clerk record a satisfaction under § 55.141. That route is open only for payment in full, so a settlement for less uses a satisfaction signed by the creditor instead.

A Chapter 7 discharge voids the judgment as a determination of the debtor’s personal liability and bars the creditor from collecting the debt from the debtor. A judgment lien recorded before the filing and not avoided during the case survives the discharge and still attaches to the property it encumbers. Creditors who understand that difference often prefer a negotiated settlement to pushing a debtor into bankruptcy, where they may collect nothing.