Florida Debt Collection Statute of Limitations
Florida runs four debt clocks out of one statute: five years on an obligation founded on a written instrument, four when it is not, three on medical debt from a facility licensed under chapter 395, and twenty on a judgment of a Florida court of record. What pauses any of them is a list the Legislature closed itself in section 95.051 — and the ground creditors most expect to help, a debtor who has vanished, switches off the moment service can be made. Written for the creditor, collection counsel or debt buyer working a Florida file: we are a public-records research firm, and we locate the debtor so your counsel can act inside the window.
The Short Version
Florida gives a creditor five years on an obligation founded on a written instrument (section 95.11(2)(b)) and four years when it is not, including, in the statute’s own phrase, store accounts (section 95.11(3)(j)). Medical debt from a chapter 395 facility has three years, running from the date the facility refers it for collection (section 95.11(4)). The clock starts at accrual, which section 95.031(1) fixes at the last element of the claim. What pauses it is closed: section 95.051(2) says a disability or other reason does not toll any statute of limitations except the grounds that section lists, plus s. 95.091, the Florida Probate Code and the Florida Guardianship Law. Part payment sits inside that list at 95.051(1)(f), written instruments only; reviving an already-barred debt is a separate rule at section 95.04 and takes a signed writing. We are a public-records research firm, working under a stated permissible purpose. General legal information, not legal advice.
Watch: Florida Debt SOL Explained
The five-year and four-year periods, and what pauses the clock.
Watch Overview
One Section, Four Clocks: Twenty, Five, Four and Three Years
What Fla. Stat. section 95.11 sorts, in the statute’s own words.
Five years written, four years otherwise. Fla. Stat. section 95.11 lists periods by length, not by subject, so a file has to be matched to a paragraph. Section 95.11(2)(b) covers “a legal or equitable action on a contract, obligation, or liability founded on a written instrument,” and the same paragraph then carves two claims out of that five-year rule: an action to enforce a claim against a payment bond, “which shall be governed by the applicable provisions of paragraph (6)(e), s. 255.05(10), s. 337.18(1), or s. 713.23(1)(e),” and “an action for a deficiency judgment governed by paragraph (6)(g)” — so a deficiency claim is not on the five-year clock this paragraph sets. Section 95.11(3)(j) is the mirror image at four years: the same action “not founded on a written instrument, including an action for the sale and delivery of goods, wares, and merchandise, and on store accounts.” That last phrase is the statute’s own words, and it sits on the four-year side of the split.
Three years on hospital debt, twenty on a judgment. Section 95.11(4) adds “an action to collect medical debt for services rendered by a facility licensed under chapter 395,” running “from the date on which the facility refers the medical debt to a third party for collection” — a referral trigger, not an accrual one. Section 95.11(1) gives twenty years on “an action on a judgment or decree of a court of record in this state”; a judgment of a court not of record, or of a federal or foreign court, sits at 95.11(2)(a) with five years.
When each clock starts. Section 95.031(1) fixes accrual at the moment “the last element constituting the cause of action occurs.” On a note payable on demand, or after date with no specific maturity date, that element is “the first written demand for payment,” and the same is true of any endorser or guarantor. So date the demand letter and keep it. The rule speaks about notes, and this page does not extend it to a card balance.
Section 95.10 imports the other jurisdiction’s bar. Under section 95.10, where a cause of action arose in another state or a foreign country “and its laws forbid the maintenance of the action because of lapse of time, no action shall be maintained in this state.” Check the originating clock first — see the Georgia debt collection statute of limitations and the Alabama debt collection statute of limitations.
| The claim | Period | Statute | The words that decide it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obligation founded on a written instrument | Five years | 95.11(2)(b) | “founded on a written instrument”; payment-bond and deficiency-judgment claims expressly excepted |
| Obligation not founded on a writing; goods; store accounts | Four years | 95.11(3)(j) | “and on store accounts” |
| Medical debt, chapter 395 facility | Three years | 95.11(4) | runs from referral “to a third party for collection” |
| Judgment of a Florida court of record | Twenty years | 95.11(1) | “a court of record in this state” |
| Judgment of a court not of record, or a foreign court | Five years | 95.11(2)(a) | not a Florida court of record |
| Court costs, fees or fines owed to the state | No limitation | 95.11(12) | “may be commenced at any time” |
Florida Closed Its Tolling List by Statute — and Put the Payment Rule Inside It
Nine grounds, three outside carve-outs, and a sentence that says so out loud.
In Florida the tolling question is answered by a statutory list. Section 95.051 tolls “the running of the time under any statute of limitations except ss. 95.281, 95.35, and 95.36” — three real-property sections. Then come the grounds, nine of them, and no others:
- (a) “Absence from the state of the person to be sued.”
- (b) “Use by the person to be sued of a false name that is unknown to the person entitled to sue so that process cannot be served on the person to be sued.”
- (c) “Concealment in the state of the person to be sued so that process cannot be served on him or her.”
- (d) Adjudicated incapacity of the person entitled to sue, arising before accrual, with a seven-year limit.
- (e) Voluntary payments by an alleged father in paternity actions.
- (f) “The payment of any part of the principal or interest of any obligation or liability founded on a written instrument.”
- (g) “The pendency of any arbitral proceeding pertaining to a dispute that is the subject of the action.”
- (h) An intervening bankruptcy, for a tax certificate under s. 197.482 and chapter 197 proceedings.
- (i) Minority or prior adjudicated incapacity while no adequate guardian exists, with a malpractice exception and the same seven-year limit.
Then subsection (2), which is the point of this page. Section 95.051(2) reads: “A disability or other reason does not toll the running of any statute of limitations except those specified in this section, s. 95.091, the Florida Probate Code, or the Florida Guardianship Law.” That is statutory text, not a judicial gloss on it.
What follows from a closed list is what is not on it. Settlement discussions, financial hardship and not knowing the claim existed are not listed grounds, and none of those words appears anywhere in section 95.051. That conclusion comes from the closure the Legislature wrote, not from an express sentence naming them.
Which is where the part-payment rule actually lives. Paragraph (f) above is the part-payment rule, and it settles two things at once: the operation the statute names is tolling, not a restart, and its scope limit is “founded on a written instrument,” the phrase that separates the five-year and four-year periods. Reviving an already-barred debt is a different section. Section 95.04 is one sentence, unamended since 1974: “An acknowledgment of, or promise to pay, a debt barred by a statute of limitations must be in writing and signed by the person sought to be charged.” The word “payment” does not appear in it.
The two rules sit on opposite sides of the expiry date, so fusing them into “a payment revives a barred debt” is not what either section says. What this page will not tell you is what a court would make of a payment on a barred account, or on an open account: no Florida decision is cited here, and the sections quoted do not answer that.
Absence Tolls Nothing If the Debtor Can Still Be Served
The unlettered sentence after 95.051(1)(i), and what it asks a creditor to do.
The list of nine invites an intuitive conclusion: the debtor left, so paragraph (a) has paused the clock. Immediately after paragraph (i) the statute adds an unlettered sentence: “Paragraphs (a)-(c) shall not apply if service of process or service by publication can be made in a manner sufficient to confer jurisdiction to grant the relief sought.”
That switches off the three grounds a creditor is most likely to reach for — absence, a false name, concealment — whenever the defendant is servable, and the test is whether service can be made, not whether anyone tried. Florida’s answer to “the debtor disappeared” is therefore closer to “then serve him,” which makes a missing address a research problem with a deadline attached.
That is where our work sits. People Locator Skip Tracing is a public-records research firm. We do not decide whether a debt is inside its Florida period, we do not give legal advice, and we are not a collection agency — your counsel decides what to file and when. We search public records and licensed sources, under a stated permissible purpose, for a current address, identity confirmation and employment where available. If the debtor’s whereabouts are the gap in your file, you can send us the account and a first read typically comes back within 24 hours, leaving the remaining months for service instead of searching. We decline any request that reads as harassment or intimidation rather than a live claim.
Credit Cards Turn on Five Statutory Words: “Founded on a Written Instrument”
Why the same balance gets argued at five years and at four.
Section 95.11 never mentions credit cards. It splits two otherwise identical claims — an action on “a contract, obligation, or liability” — on one question of documentation: is the obligation founded on a written instrument? Paragraph (2)(b) says yes and gives five years; paragraph (3)(j) says no and gives four. The Florida-specific question about card debt runs through those five words, and on the statute’s face the split is a documentation question. This page does not say how a Florida court has resolved that in any case, and makes no assertion about what a pleading must attach. The statutory point is checkable, and a year of runway can sit on the answer.
And the agreement cannot shorten the window. Section 95.03: “Any provision in a contract fixing the period of time within which an action arising out of the contract may be begun at a time less than that provided by the applicable statute of limitations is void.” It is silent about lengthening a period, and this page asserts nothing on that.
Two Renumberings in Two Years, and Why a Pre-2024 Citation Is Stale
Chapter 2023-15 moved the letters. Chapter 2024-183 moved the subsections.
Florida renumbered section 95.11 twice in successive sessions. Neither change altered the length of an existing debt period, though the 2024 act added a new one. So a citation carrying the pre-2023 letter for a four-year paragraph, or a pre-2024 number for a subsection numbered (4) or higher, no longer matches the current text; the designations this page relies on — 95.11(1), (2)(b) and (3)(j) — were not renumbered in 2024, though (2)(b)’s internal cross-references were amended. 2023: the letters shifted upward. CS/CS/HB 837 became chapter 2023-15, effective 24 March 2023. In the 2022 edition the four-year list began “(a) An action founded on negligence,” and store accounts sat at 95.11(3)(k). The act struck negligence from that list and every paragraph below moved up one letter — the enrolled bill’s own strike-and-underline coding shows “(j)(k)” against the store-accounts text — while negligence went to the head of the two-year list, pushing those letters down. One act re-lettered the section in two directions. Section 28 of the act applies its amendments “to causes of action accruing after the effective date of this act,” and Section 27 directed that the phrase be replaced with the date the act became law, which is why the published statutory Note prints the applicability clause with a bracketed [March 24, 2023] in its place. That clause matters for negligence; for the debt paragraphs it was a re-lettering, so an account that accrued in 2021 still has four years.
2024: the subsections shifted downward. Chapter 2024-183 redesignated present subsections (4) through (12) as (5) through (13), added a new subsection (4) — the three-year medical-debt rule — and amended paragraph (b) of subsection (2), effective 1 July 2024. Nothing in that act attaches an applicability rule to the section 95.11 amendment, so this page gives the effective date and stops there.
| Edition | Store accounts | Medical debt | (2)(b) payment-bond and deficiency cross-references |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 Florida Statutes | 95.11(3)(k) | none | (5)(e) and (5)(h) |
| 2023 (ch. 2023-15, eff. 24 Mar 2023) | 95.11(3)(j) | none | (5)(e) and (5)(h) |
| 2024 (ch. 2024-183, eff. 1 Jul 2024) | 95.11(3)(j) | 95.11(4), three years | (6)(e) and (6)(h) |
| Current 2026 edition | 95.11(3)(j) | 95.11(4), three years | (6)(e) and (6)(g) |
Florida’s Own Collection Statute Runs a Second Two-Year Clock
Sections 559.72 and 559.77, and the federal floor underneath them.
When a Florida period expires the debt does not disappear, but the exposure changes direction. Section 559.72, in Part VI of chapter 559, is worth quoting for the words that set its scope — “In collecting consumer debts, a person may not:” — followed by nineteen numbered prohibitions. The one that concerns an aged account is paragraph (9): “Claim, attempt, or threaten to enforce a debt when such person knows that the debt is not legitimate, or assert the existence of some other legal right when such person knows that the right does not exist.” The mental state is knowledge, not a should-have-known standard, and this page does not paraphrase it into one.
Remedies, and the clock a creditor rarely counts. Under section 559.77(2) a person who fails to comply with section 559.72 is liable for actual damages and for additional statutory damages “as the court may allow, but not exceeding $1,000,” together with court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees. In a class action the same subsection allows up to $1,000 for each named plaintiff and an aggregate award of additional statutory damages “up to the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the defendant’s net worth for all remaining class members” — a cap on that aggregate additional-damages award for the remaining class, not on the case — and the subsection separately preserves punitive damages and equitable relief. Section 559.77(3) is a bona fide error defence. And 559.77(4) is a second Florida clock: “An action brought under this section must be commenced within 2 years after the date the alleged violation occurred.”
An assignee also has a dated step. Under section 559.715 an assignee “must give the debtor written notice of such assignment as soon as practical after the assignment is made, but at least 30 days before any action to collect the debt” — measured against any action to collect, not against filing suit. This page does not state what happens if the notice is missed, because the section does not say. Only that it has to be given, and a written notice cannot reach an address nobody has.
The federal floor. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1692e a debt collector “may not use any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in connection with the collection of any debt,” including at (5) “The threat to take any action that cannot legally be taken or that is not intended to be taken.” Regulation F, 12 C.F.R. 1006.26(b), is flatter: “A debt collector must not bring or threaten to bring a legal action against a consumer to collect a time-barred debt.” The same paragraph carries its own exception: “This paragraph (b) does not apply to proofs of claim filed in connection with a bankruptcy proceeding.” Note the scope difference: the federal prohibitions are addressed to a defined “debt collector” with listed exclusions in 15 U.S.C. 1692a(6), while section 559.72 is addressed to “a person.”
Because this material touches credit reporting, the boundary belongs in plain words. We are not a consumer reporting agency, we do not produce consumer reports, and nothing we deliver may be used to decide anyone’s eligibility for credit, insurance, employment or housing.
One Florida Judgment, Three Different Clocks
95.11(1) counts from accrual under 95.031. 55.081 counts from entry. 55.10 counts from recording. 55.204 counts from filing.
Winning does not collapse the deadlines into one. A Florida money judgment carries three limits, each running from a different event, which is how a lien lapses while the judgment is still good. Our Florida judgments guide covers enforcement mechanics; the point here is timing.
| Clock | Length | Runs from | Statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action on a judgment of a Florida court of record | Twenty years | accrual of the cause of action, under 95.031 | 95.11(1) |
| Lien capacity, real or personal property | Twenty years | entry of the judgment | 55.081 |
| Real-property lien | Ten years, extendable | recording of the certified copy | 55.10 |
| Personal-property lien | Five years, one renewal | filing of the judgment lien certificate | 55.204 |
What the table cannot carry. The two twenty-year figures are different rules: section 55.081 says no judgment “shall be a lien upon real or personal property within the state after the expiration of 20 years from the date of the entry,” subject to section 55.10. Under 55.10(1) a certified copy recorded on or after 1 July 1994 gives a lien “for an initial period of 10 years from the date of the recording” — but only if the lienholder’s address is in the judgment or in an affidavit recorded simultaneously with it, which the subsection says twice. Section 55.10(2) requires that address affidavit again on every extension, and an extension may itself be extended, capped by 55.10(3) at the 55.081 period or satisfaction. On personal property the door shuts harder: a second lien filed under section 55.204(3) “permanently lapses and becomes invalid 5 years after its filing date, and additional liens based on the original judgment … may not be acquired.”
Three clocks, three start dates. If assets are the next question, our guide to how to find hidden assets covers the research side, and our Tampa Bay skip tracing coverage is the local starting point. General legal information, not legal advice.
Our Commitment
Florida wrote the answer to a vanished debtor into section 95.051 itself: absence, a false name and concealment “shall not apply if service of process or service by publication can be made in a manner sufficient to confer jurisdiction to grant the relief sought.” A debtor who can be served does not pause those three grounds. We search public records and licensed sources for a current address and identity, under a stated permissible purpose, so a creditor’s counsel can act inside that window. We are not a law firm, not a collection agency, and not a consumer reporting agency.
Eight Florida Limitations Questions
What is the statute of limitations on debt in Florida?
Five years on an obligation founded on a written instrument, under section 95.11(2)(b), and four years on one that is not, including goods sold and store accounts, under section 95.11(3)(j). Medical debt from a chapter 395 facility is three years, under section 95.11(4).
Is the statute of limitations on credit-card debt in Florida four years or five?
Section 95.11 never names credit cards. It sorts the two periods by whether the obligation is founded on a written instrument, so which paragraph applies depends on what the documents show. No Florida decision is cited on this page, and the text alone does not resolve one account.
What does Florida Statute 95.11 actually say about debt?
Section 95.11(3)(j) reads: a legal or equitable action on a contract, obligation, or liability not founded on a written instrument, including an action for the sale and delivery of goods, wares, and merchandise, and on store accounts. Section 95.11(2)(b) covers the same claim founded on a writing, at five years.
Did the 2023 and 2024 changes move the Florida debt subsections?
Twice, and neither changed the length of an existing debt period, though the 2024 act added a new one. Chapter 2023-15, effective 24 March 2023, struck negligence from the four-year list, so store accounts moved from 95.11(3)(k) to 95.11(3)(j). Chapter 2024-183, effective 1 July 2024, redesignated subsections (4) through (12) as (5) through (13) and added the new three-year medical-debt subsection (4).
Does a partial payment restart the statute of limitations in Florida?
Florida puts part payment in the tolling statute, not in a revival doctrine. Section 95.051(1)(f) tolls on payment of part of the principal or interest of an obligation founded on a written instrument. Section 95.04 is separate: an acknowledgment of a barred debt must be in writing and signed by the person sought to be charged.
What pauses the limitations clock in Florida, and what never does?
Section 95.051(2) says a disability or other reason does not toll any statute of limitations except the nine grounds that section lists, s. 95.091, the Florida Probate Code, or the Florida Guardianship Law. Settlement talks, hardship and ignorance of the claim are not on it, and absence, a false name and concealment do not apply if service can confer jurisdiction.
How long is a Florida judgment enforceable, and is the lien the same clock?
Different clocks. Section 95.11(1) gives twenty years for an action on a judgment of a court of record in this state, and section 55.081 says no judgment is a lien on Florida property after twenty years from entry. A real-property lien runs ten years from recording under section 55.10; a personal-property lien lapses five years after the judgment lien certificate is filed, under section 55.204.
Can a creditor be sued for pursuing a time-barred debt in Florida?
Florida’s statute reaches a person, not only a defined debt collector. Section 559.72 opens: in collecting consumer debts, a person may not, and paragraph (9) covers threatening to enforce a debt the person knows is not legitimate. Section 559.77 allows statutory damages not exceeding $1,000, and 559.77(4) gives the debtor two years to sue. Not a law firm; not a consumer reporting agency.
The Clock Runs Whether or Not the Address Works
Florida does not pause a limitations period for a debtor who could still be served. We research the current address and identity so your counsel can file and serve inside the window, and a first read typically comes back within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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