Florida Marital Property Laws
Florida is not a community property state, but it is not a free-hand equitable state either: the statute orders the court to begin from the premise that the split should be equal and to justify any departure. It also writes an actual formula into the law for appreciation on property whose mortgage was paid down with marital money, fixes fair market value as the standard for a closely held business, and makes a forged signature the forger’s own debt. And since 2021 Florida spouses have been able to elect community property for specific assets through a trust that, in the statute’s own words, takes those assets outside the division statute entirely. This page works through both regimes from the text. General information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
Florida divides property under Fla. Stat. 61.075. Each spouse’s nonmarital assets and liabilities are set aside, and the court then divides the marital ones beginning from the premise that the distribution should be equal, departing only where one of ten listed factors justifies it. Two dates run the process: what counts as marital is fixed at the filing of the petition (or an earlier valid separation agreement), while valuation is whatever date the judge finds just – and different assets may be valued as of different dates. Real property held as tenants by the entireties is presumed marital whether it was acquired before or during the marriage, and the gift presumption is overcome only by clear and convincing evidence. Since 2021, spouses can elect community property for particular assets by transferring them into a community property trust under Fla. Stat. 736.1501 to 736.1512; that election has real teeth, because 736.1508 provides that 61.075 does not apply to what the trust holds and that a dissolution action left pending for 180 days terminates the trust automatically. Both statutes were amended recently – 61.075 in 2024, the trust act in 2025.
Watch: Florida’s Equal Premise
Set aside the nonmarital, then justify any move off equal.
Watch Overview
Start At Equal, Then Justify Moving
And two different dates decide what is even on the list.
Florida does not ask a judge to reach a fair number from a blank page. Fla. Stat. 61.075(1) sets aside each spouse’s nonmarital assets and liabilities and then instructs the court that in distributing the marital ones it “must begin with the premise that the distribution should be equal, unless there is a justification for an unequal distribution.” Equal is the starting position; a departure has to be argued for, on the ten factors the subsection then lists – contribution to the marriage including as homemaker, economic circumstances, duration, interrupted careers, one spouse’s contribution to the other’s career or education, the desirability of keeping a business or professional practice intact, contribution to acquiring and improving both marital and nonmarital assets, keeping the marital home for a dependent child, intentional dissipation, and a closing catch-all.
Dissipation has a window attached to it. Factor (i) reaches waste or destruction of marital assets after the petition was filed or within two years before it. That is a date-bounded factual claim, and it is proved with transaction history rather than argument.
Two dates, not one
Florida separates identification from valuation, and this trips up more people than any other part of the statute. Under 61.075(7) the cut-off for deciding what counts as marital is the earliest of the date the parties signed a valid separation agreement, another date the agreement expressly sets, or the date the dissolution petition was filed. The valuation date is separate: whatever the judge determines is just and equitable, and the statute expressly permits different assets to be valued as of different dates as the circumstances require.
So “what did they own” is a question about the filing date, and “what was it worth” may be a different question for each asset. That is why a Florida asset picture has to be dated at every point rather than compiled as a single snapshot – the same discipline behind an asset search before filing for divorce.
What Florida Counts As Marital
Including two presumptions that run on titling alone.
Fla. Stat. 61.075(6) does the classifying. Assets acquired and liabilities incurred during the marriage are marital whether held individually or jointly, and 61.075(8) adds a general presumption that anything acquired after the marriage and not specifically established as nonmarital is marital. Two entries in that subsection turn on how property is titled, which is unusual for an equitable-distribution state and reflects Florida’s attachment to tenancy by the entireties.
| Category | Florida’s rule | Who carries the burden |
|---|---|---|
| Real property held as tenants by the entireties | Presumed marital whether acquired before or during the marriage. Titling | The spouse claiming it is nonmarital. |
| Personal property titled jointly as tenants by the entireties | Same presumption, before or during the marriage. | The spouse claiming it is nonmarital. |
| Interspousal gift of real property | Marital, but cannot be made without a writing complying with Fla. Stat. 689.01. | The gift presumption is overcome only by clear and convincing evidence. |
| Enhancement and appreciation of a nonmarital asset | Marital where it resulted from either party’s efforts or from marital funds spent on it. | The spouse claiming the enhancement. |
| Income from a nonmarital asset | Nonmarital unless treated, used or relied upon by the parties as a marital asset. | The spouse arguing it was treated as marital. |
| Retirement, pension, profit-sharing, annuity, deferred compensation | Marital as to all vested and nonvested benefits accrued during the marriage. | Whoever disputes the accrual period. |
| Assets acquired before marriage, or by non-interspousal gift or inheritance | Nonmarital, along with anything acquired in exchange for them. | The spouse claiming the exclusion. |
The entireties rows matter more than they look. A house one spouse bought years before the wedding, then deeded into the couple’s joint names, arrives at the courthouse presumed marital, and the spouse who paid for it must prove otherwise. The gift presumption is harder still: Florida sets the standard at clear and convincing evidence, a higher bar than the ordinary civil standard. A deed is a fact you can pull; the story behind it is what has to be documented.
The One Statute With A Formula In It
Mortgage paydown on nonmarital real property.
Suppose one spouse owned a house before the marriage and the couple paid down its mortgage with marital income. Most states leave that to case law. Florida writes the arithmetic into the statute. Fla. Stat. 61.075(6)(a)1.c makes marital both the principal paid down from marital funds and a share of the property’s passive appreciation, and then specifies exactly how to compute that share.
How the calculation runs
Passive appreciation is the value of the property on the valuation date, minus its value at the marriage or at acquisition (whichever is later), minus any active appreciation produced by the parties’ efforts or marital funds, minus any further encumbrances taken during the marriage beyond the first mortgage on which marital principal was paid.
The coverture fraction is then a numerator of all marital-funds principal paid on notes and mortgages secured by the property during the marriage, over a denominator of the property’s value at the later of the marriage, the acquisition, or the date the first such mortgage encumbered it. Multiply the passive appreciation by that fraction and you have the marital portion of the appreciation.
The total marital portion is that figure plus the mortgage principal paid from marital funds plus any active appreciation – capped at the total net equity in the property on the valuation date. And the statute is directive rather than advisory: the court shall apply the formula unless a party shows circumstances establishing that applying it would be inequitable on the facts.
Every input is a dated, documentary fact: value at marriage, value at acquisition, when the first mortgage attached, how much principal came out of marital income, what further encumbrances were taken and when. A Florida property claim that cannot supply those numbers is not a claim the statute can process. That is public-records work before it is legal work – deeds, mortgages, satisfactions, and the recording dates that order them.
Closely Held Businesses After The 2024 Rewrite
Fair market value, and the goodwill line.
Chapter 2024-237 added a set of instructions to Fla. Stat. 61.075(6)(a)1.f that most general Florida property explainers still have not absorbed. The court must determine the value of the marital interests in a closely held business, and the statute now fixes both the standard and the treatment of goodwill.
The standard of value is fair market value, defined in the statute itself as the price at which property would change hands between a willing and able buyer and a willing and able seller, neither under compulsion, both with reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.
On goodwill, the statute draws the line that used to be drawn only in case law: where there is goodwill separate and distinct from the continued presence and reputation of the owner spouse, that is enterprise goodwill, it is a marital asset, and the court must value it. Goodwill that lives in the owner personally is not. The subsection adds that the court must consider evidence that a sale would require a covenant not to compete or a similar restrictive covenant, but that such evidence alone does not preclude a finding of enterprise goodwill – closing off an argument that had been used to shrink business values.
Practically, that turns a Florida business division into a records exercise before it becomes a valuation exercise. Entity filings, registered agents, officers and managers, related entities, licenses, real property held by the business, UCC filings and liens all describe the enterprise as distinct from the person, and that distinction is exactly what the statute now asks the court to price.
Two Corners Of 61.075 Nobody Writes About
A forgery rule and an emergency valve.
A forged signature stays with the forger
Fla. Stat. 61.075(6)(b)5 makes any liability incurred by forgery, or by one spouse signing the other spouse’s name without authority, a nonmarital liability of the party who did it – not a shared marital debt. The court may also weigh the forgery when awarding attorney fees and costs under Fla. Stat. 61.16, and may make a separate award for the fees and costs the forgery caused. The one exception is ratification: if the other spouse subsequently ratified the signature, the rule does not apply. Very few states put this in the division statute, and it turns “which of these debts are actually ours” into a question worth auditing line by line.
Money before the final hearing, but only on extraordinary circumstances
Under 61.075(5) a Florida court may enter an interim partial distribution while the case is pending – identifying and valuing the assets in the motion, setting aside the nonmarital ones, and distributing part of the marital ones. It takes a sworn motion, a specific factual basis, and a showing of good cause, and the statute defines good cause narrowly as extraordinary circumstances. The court must consider whether funds are needed to prevent repossession or foreclosure, loss of housing, default on a marital debt or a tax lien; whether funds are needed for a dependent child’s expense whose non-payment would harm the child; whether a party needs access to funds for a reasonable amount of fees, costs or suit money; and any other circumstance justifying the order. Anything distributed this way is credited in the final allocation, and the court must find the partial distribution will not prejudice either party’s claims for support or fees.
“Does Not Establish Community Property”
The sentence that sets up everything below.
Two clean-up provisions close the default statute, and one of them is the hinge of this page. Fla. Stat. 61.075(11) abolishes special equity outright: every claim formerly framed that way, and every special-equity calculation, is gone, and must instead be brought as a claim for unequal distribution under the factors or as a claim of enhancement or appreciation of nonmarital property. Old Florida guidance that still speaks in special-equity terms is describing a doctrine that no longer exists.
And 61.075(8), after setting out the marital presumption, states that the section does not require spouses to join in conveying a spouse’s individual property, does not affect the laws of descent and distribution, and does not “establish community property in this state.” Florida’s default regime is emphatic on the point. Which raises the obvious question – and Florida answers it in a completely different chapter of the statutes.
The Community Property Trust Act
Fla. Stat. 736.1501 to 736.1512, in force since July 1, 2021.
Florida spouses can elect community property treatment for specific assets by putting them into a trust that satisfies Part XV of the Florida Trust Code. Fla. Stat. 736.1501 names it the Community Property Trust Act; 736.1502 defines a qualifying trust as one “created, amended, restated, or modified on or after July 1, 2021” – so an existing trust can be brought within the act by amendment rather than replaced.
The formalities
Fla. Stat. 736.1503 requires four things of the instrument. It must expressly declare that it is a community property trust within the meaning of Part XV. It must have at least one qualified trustee – a natural person resident in Florida, or a company authorized to act as trustee in Florida – while either or both spouses may also serve. It must be signed by both settlor spouses with the formalities the Trust Code requires. And it must open with a specified all-capitals warning, in substantially the statutory words, that the consequences may be very extensive as to creditors, third parties, the marriage, a divorce and death, that it should be signed only after careful consideration, and that although not required it is strongly advisable that each spouse obtain their own separate legal counsel.
What the 2025 amendment changed
Chapter 2025-159 rewrote the definition in 736.1502(1). Community property now expressly means the property and the appreciation of and income from the property held by a qualified trustee during the marriage, and the statute declares that such property and its appreciation and income “are community property for purposes of general law.” A note published with the section records that section 7 of the amending act makes the change remedial and applicable to trusts created before, on, or after its effective date. Guidance written against the 2021 text is out of date on this point.
Reach, control and revocability
Fla. Stat. 736.1505 lets spouses classify any or all of their property as community property “whether both, one, or neither is domiciled in the state,” makes the trust enforceable without consideration, leaves management and control to the trust’s terms, and provides that property loses its community character when distributed out. 736.1504 lets the spouses agree on rights and obligations in the property, management, disposition on dissolution or death, and whether the trust is revocable or irrevocable – it is revocable by default unless the agreement specifically says otherwise. It also deems the settlor spouses the only qualified beneficiaries until the first death, regardless of revocability.
A Divorce Clock Inside The Trust
Fla. Stat. 736.1508 and the sentence that switches 61.075 off.
Fla. Stat. 736.1508(1) contains the clearest statement in Florida law of what an elective regime actually does: on dissolution the trust terminates, the trustee distributes half the trust assets to each spouse – and “s. 61.075 does not apply to the disposition of the assets and liabilities held in a community property trust.” Everything on the first half of this page – the equal premise, the ten factors, the coverture fraction, the goodwill rules – stops at the trust’s edge. Inside it, the answer is halves.
The 180-day rule
Filing for dissolution does not by itself end the trust. But if the action remains pending for 180 days, the trust terminates automatically and the trustee must distribute half the assets to each spouse – unless one of four things happens: a settlor spouse objects to termination within 180 days of the filing, at which point either party may ask the dissolution court whether good cause exists to terminate the trust while the case is pending; the dissolution court orders otherwise; the spouses agree otherwise in writing while the action is pending; or the trust agreement itself provides otherwise. No other page in this family has a deadline like it.
How the halves come out
Unless the agreement says otherwise the trustee may distribute in divided or undivided interests and adjust valuation differences, on a non-pro-rata basis, a pro-rata basis, or both. Two limits sit on top of that. The trustee may not distribute real property or business interests in a way that leaves the ex-spouses as co-owners after the marriage ends, unless they agree otherwise in a separate written agreement executed during the dissolution action. And nothing may be done in a manner that could cause the assets to stop being treated as community property. Subsection (4) gives the dissolution court personal and subject-matter jurisdiction over both spouses and the trustee to make that happen.
One thing the trust cannot touch: Fla. Stat. 736.1509 provides that a community property trust does not adversely affect a child’s right to support under Fla. Stat. 61.30 or the applicable law of another jurisdiction.
Death, Homestead And The Elective Estate
Where the Florida trust interacts with Florida’s other famous rules.
Fla. Stat. 736.1507 splits the trust at death: half the aggregate value reflects the surviving spouse’s share and is not subject to testamentary disposition by the decedent or to the laws of succession; the other half is the decedent’s and is. The trustee may distribute in divided or undivided interests and adjust valuation differences, pro rata, non-pro rata, or both. Then comes the sentence that makes Florida practitioners pay attention: the decedent spouse’s one-half share “shall not be included in the elective estate.” In a state with a statutory elective share, that carve-out is a planning fact of the first order.
On creditors, Fla. Stat. 736.1506 allows an obligation incurred solely by one settlor spouse, before or during the marriage, to be satisfied from that spouse’s one-half share unless the agreement provides for more, and allows an obligation incurred by both during the marriage to be satisfied from the trust – all of it expressly subject to s. 4, Art. X of the Florida Constitution, the homestead provision. Florida’s homestead protection sits above the trust, not beneath it.
Fla. Stat. 736.1511 addresses the federal question directly, providing that for purposes of 26 U.S.C. s. 1014(b)(6) as of January 1, 2021, a community property trust is considered a trust established under the community property laws of the state. It also preserves the character of property that was community property under another jurisdiction’s law while it sits in the trust, and on revocation, to the extent provided by Fla. Stat. 732.216 to 732.228. What that produces as a tax outcome is a question for a tax professional, not for a web page.
When The Trust Will Not Hold
Fla. Stat. 736.1512, and the disclosure problem underneath it.
A community property trust executed during marriage is unenforceable if the spouse resisting it proves any of four things under Fla. Stat. 736.1512– and it is four, where South Dakota’s parallel provision lists three. The ground Florida adds is its own: that the trust agreement was the product of fraud, duress, coercion or overreaching. The other three are unconscionability at the moment the trust was made; execution that was not voluntary; and a disclosure failure with three limbs that must all be established together – no fair and reasonable disclosure of what the other spouse owned and owed, no voluntarily signed written waiver expressly giving up the right to disclosure beyond what was actually provided, and no notice of those obligations from any other source. Unconscionability is decided by the court as a matter of law. The statute also makes clear that a trust is not unenforceable solely because the spouses lacked separate counsel – even though 736.1503 strongly advises it.
The disclosure limb is the one that gets litigated, and it is a records question in both directions. A spouse defending the instrument wants to show what was disclosed and that it matched reality; a spouse attacking it wants to show what existed and was not disclosed. Both are answered by an independent picture of what the couple actually held at the time, which is the same evidence a Florida judgment creditor assembles for a very different purpose.
Our Part Of A Florida File
Dated facts, not legal conclusions.
Classification, valuation, whether an unequal distribution is justified, whether a trust holds – those are questions for Florida counsel and the court. What we supply is the layer underneath: a lawful, independently sourced picture of what property exists, where it sits, and the dates attached to it. Florida makes that layer unusually demanding, because the statute runs on dates. The marital cut-off is the filing date. The valuation date can differ asset by asset. Dissipation reaches back two years before the petition. The coverture fraction needs the value at marriage, the value at acquisition and the date the first mortgage attached. None of that is a single snapshot.
Everything we pull is public record or lawfully licensed data, obtained only where a permissible purpose exists, by a records-research firm – we are not licensed private investigators and claim no investigative licensure in Florida. Deeds, mortgages and satisfactions from the county Official Records; entity, officer and registered-agent filings; UCC filings, liens and judgments; vehicle and vessel records; and the recording dates that put them in order – the standard toolkit behind our skip tracing services. We do not pretext, we do not misrepresent who we are to obtain records, and we do not reach into the contents of private financial accounts. What we hand over is sourced, and the things we could not confirm are named as unconfirmed rather than smoothed over. Our research is not a consumer report and is never furnished for eligibility decisions about a person – credit, insurance, employment or tenancy sit outside what we do, and outside the Fair Credit Reporting Act uses our work is not built for.
A boundary we do not move. Florida dissolution files sometimes sit next to a safety problem. Where a request looks like an effort to locate a person hiding from domestic violence, or to reach someone protected by an injunction, a protective order or an address-confidentiality arrangement, we decline the work regardless of the purpose offered. The safety of the person being sought comes ahead of the file. The same rule applies when a Florida estate has to be compared with how another state divides marital property.
Where Florida Divisions Come Apart
Six failures that are documentary, not legal.
No Value At The Marriage Date
The coverture fraction cannot be computed without it.
A Deed Into Joint Names
Entireties titling flips the presumption against the buyer.
A Business Treated As One Person
Enterprise goodwill has to be identified before it can be valued.
Debts Nobody Audited
The forgery rule only helps if the signature is actually examined.
Movement Inside The Two Years
Dissipation is judged on transfers before the petition as well as after.
A Trust Nobody Inventoried
What is inside the trust is halved; what is outside is not.
Who Brings Us A Florida Estate
Divorce, probate and the trust cases in between.
Spouses Filing
Fixing the filing-date picture
Marital Lawyers
Feeding the coverture inputs
Business Valuers
Separating enterprise from person
Estate Counsel
Elective-estate questions
Trustees
Records duties under Part XV
Relocating Couples
Property brought in from elsewhere
Dating A Florida Asset Picture
Because 61.075 asks about several different days.
Pull The Official Records
Deeds, mortgages, satisfactions and liens with their recording dates.
Anchor The Filing Date
What existed as of the petition, which is the classification cut-off.
Walk Back Two Years
Transfers inside the dissipation window in factor (i).
Separate Entity From Owner
Filings, agents and holdings that describe a business as its own thing.
What We Hand You
A dated, sourced picture of a Florida estate built for a statute that runs on dates – what existed at the filing, what moved in the two years before it, and what the county records say about when each interest attached. Where a value or a date could not be established from records, we say so instead of estimating. Records research done lawfully since 2004 – no pretexting, ever.
Florida Property Questions
Is Florida a community property state?
No. Florida divides property under Fla. Stat. 61.075, and subsection (8) states expressly that the section does not establish community property in this state. Florida does, however, let spouses elect community property treatment for particular assets by transferring them into a community property trust under Fla. Stat. 736.1501 to 736.1512. That is an opt-in confined to what the trust holds, not a change to the state’s default regime.
Is Florida a 50/50 divorce state?
Closer than most equitable-distribution states. Fla. Stat. 61.075(1) requires the court to begin with the premise that the distribution of marital assets and liabilities should be equal, and to justify any unequal distribution on the listed factors. Equal is the starting position rather than the guaranteed outcome, and in a contested case the court must support the distribution with written findings.
What date decides whether an asset is marital in Florida?
Under Fla. Stat. 61.075(7) the cut-off is the earliest of the date the parties entered a valid separation agreement, another date the agreement expressly establishes, or the date the dissolution petition was filed. Valuation is a separate question decided on whatever date or dates the judge finds just and equitable, and the statute expressly allows different assets to be valued as of different dates.
Does it matter whose name is on a Florida deed?
Less than people expect. Fla. Stat. 61.075(6)(a)2 presumes that all real property held by the parties as tenants by the entireties is a marital asset whether it was acquired before or during the marriage, with the burden on whoever claims otherwise, and subparagraph 3 applies the same presumption to jointly titled personal property. An interspousal gift of real property also requires a writing meeting Fla. Stat. 689.01.
How does Florida treat appreciation on a house owned before the marriage?
Fla. Stat. 61.075(6)(a)1.c makes the mortgage principal paid from marital funds marital, plus a share of the property’s passive appreciation calculated with a coverture fraction the statute sets out – marital principal paid during the marriage over the property value at the later of the marriage, the acquisition, or the date the first such mortgage attached. The court must apply the formula unless a party shows that doing so would be inequitable.
Is business goodwill divided in a Florida divorce?
Enterprise goodwill is. Under Fla. Stat. 61.075(6)(a)1.f, as amended in 2024, goodwill that is separate and distinct from the continued presence and reputation of the owner spouse is enterprise goodwill, is a marital asset, and must be valued by the court, using fair market value as the standard. Evidence that a sale would require a non-compete must be considered but does not by itself preclude a finding of enterprise goodwill.
What happens to a Florida community property trust if we divorce?
Fla. Stat. 736.1508 terminates it and distributes half the assets to each spouse, and provides that s. 61.075 does not apply to those assets at all. Filing does not end the trust immediately, but if the action stays pending for 180 days the trust terminates automatically unless a spouse objects within that period, the court orders otherwise, the spouses agree otherwise in writing, or the trust agreement provides otherwise.
What do you do, and what will you not do?
We build a dated, sourced public-records picture of a Florida estate – official records, entity filings, liens and judgments – and name what we could not confirm. We do not give legal advice or decide classification, we do not pretext, and we do not reach private account contents. Our work is not a consumer report and is not furnished for decisions about credit, insurance, employment or tenancy. We decline requests that look like locating someone hiding from domestic violence or protected by an injunction.
Get The Dates On Record
Tell us the parties and your permissible purpose and we will build a Florida asset picture dated the way the statute needs it – what existed at filing, what moved in the two years before, and what the county records say about each interest – typically within 24 hours. Contact us to begin.
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