There's a judgment against the seller. What happens to the closing?
A recorded judgment against a seller can attach to real property they own in that county and has to be dealt with before clear title passes. The question is never whether someone is worried about it, but whether the judgment attaches to this property, for how much, and what it takes to release or satisfy it at closing.
Does this stop the closing?
Rarely — if it is found early.
- Who resolves it
- The seller, from proceeds
- Timeline
- 3–10 business days for a written payoff
- Cost to buyer
- Usually none
- Needs a lawyer?
- Only if disputed, or homestead is contested
Have a file with this on it?
Send us the addressWhat happens, in order
5 steps from search to resolutionStep 1
The search returns it
A hit in the county's official records, matched on the seller's name.
Step 2
Same person?
Confirmed or ruled out with an affidavit of identity the underwriter accepts.
Step 3
Does it attach?
Certified copy, address, dates — whether the property is homestead, and how the spouses hold title.
Step 4
Written payoff
From the creditor or counsel, good through a date, verified by phone.
Step 5
Paid and satisfied
Paid from proceeds at closing; the creditor records a satisfaction.
Why does a judgment against a person affect a property?
A money judgment is entered against a person, not a parcel. But once it is recorded in the county's official records, Florida law can give it a lien on real property the debtor owns in that county.
Under Fla. Stat. § 55.10, a judgment, order or decree becomes a lien on real property in a county when a certified copy is recorded in that county’s official records. Two details in that sentence do the work: it has to be a certified copy, and the recorded copy has to carry the address of the person who holds the lien — or be recorded together with an affidavit supplying it. A plain copy, or one with no address, does not create the lien.
The lien runs for an initial 10 years from the date of recording, and can be extended once for a further 10 by re-recording a certified copy, with a current address affidavit, before the first period expires. Behind both sits Fla. Stat. § 55.081, which caps the whole thing: no judgment is a lien on real property in Florida after 20 years from the date the judgment was entered, however many times it has been re-recorded.
The practical consequence is that the judgment has to be addressed before the property can be conveyed free of it.
"The seller's agent says not to worry about it."
That is not a status report. It is a hope. Three things have to be established, and none of them is established by someone's confidence:
- Is this the same person? Judgment indexes match on name. A common name produces hits that belong to someone else entirely, and a search that returns a "John Smith" judgment says nothing until identity is confirmed or ruled out.
- Does it attach to this property? That depends on where the judgment was recorded, when, what the debtor owned at the time, and whether the property is protected homestead.
- What is the current payoff? The face amount of a judgment is rarely what it takes to release it. Interest runs, and costs may have been added.
Until those three are answered in writing, "don't worry about it" is not information.
What about homestead?
Florida's constitutional homestead protection can shield a homestead property from a judgment lien, but it is narrower and more technical than it sounds in conversation, and it does not resolve itself simply because someone lives there.
The protection is constitutional, not statutory. Article X, section 4(a) of the Florida Constitution exempts a homestead from forced sale and says that "no judgment, decree or execution shall be a lien thereon" — then writes three exceptions into the same sentence: taxes and assessments on the property, obligations contracted for its purchase, improvement or repair, and obligations contracted for house, field or other labor performed on the realty. A judgment for one of those is not stopped by homestead.
The limit is size, not value: 160 contiguous acres outside a municipality, or half an acre inside one, where the exemption is limited to the residence of the owner or the owner’s family. A very expensive house on a small lot is as protected as a modest one.
What homestead does not do is clear the record. The judgment is still recorded, still returns on a search, and still has to be dealt with as a requirement on the commitment. Whether this property qualified when the judgment was recorded, and still qualifies now, is a question of fact about how it has been owned and occupied.
If homestead is the reason a judgment is not being paid at closing, that position needs to be documented and accepted by the underwriter before closing, not asserted afterwards.
How does it get cleared?
Most often it is paid from the seller's proceeds at closing, and the creditor records a satisfaction. That requires a written payoff from the judgment creditor or their counsel — good through a specific date, with the figure and the wiring or delivery instructions confirmed directly with the source.
Recording the satisfaction is the creditor's own obligation, and it carries a deadline. Under Fla. Stat. § 701.04(3), within 60 days after a lien or judgment has been fully paid, the creditor or assignee — or, for a judgment, the attorney of record — must execute an instrument acknowledging satisfaction, have it acknowledged or proven, send it for recording in the official records of the proper county, and send the recorded satisfaction back to whoever made the payment. The prevailing party in a civil action to enforce that is entitled to attorney fees and costs.
Sixty days is the limit the statute allows, not a closing timetable. Where a judgment is paid from the seller's proceeds, the satisfaction is usually recorded after the closing rather than at it — which is what makes the deadline, and the attorney-fee provision behind it, worth knowing about when a satisfaction does not appear.
Where the judgment does not belong to this seller, the route is different: an affidavit establishing that the debtor is a different person, in a form the underwriter will accept.
The instrument is an affidavit of identity — often called a same-name or not-the-same-person affidavit — sworn by the seller, stating that they are not the person named in the judgment and setting out the facts that show it. What makes it acceptable is the supporting detail rather than the denial: full legal name and any former names, date of birth, the last four digits of the social security number, residence history covering the period of the judgment, and a comparison against whatever identifying information the judgment and its underlying case file contain. That is what we assemble as standard.
Where the match is close, or the judgment is large, the underwriter may also want a search of the debtor's identifiers, a credit report, or a written statement from the judgment creditor's counsel that the seller is not their debtor.
The form and the supporting documentation are First American's call. We obtain their written sign-off on the affidavit before closing, on every file, rather than relying on it afterwards.
Our practice
How Bayit Title handles this
When a judgment comes back on a search, we identify the creditor and request the payoff in writing rather than working from the recorded amount. We tell both sides what we found, what it appears to be, and what it will take to release it — in writing, and early, because a payoff that has to be chased in the last two days is the one that moves a closing date. Payoff instructions are verified with the creditor directly, by phone, using a number we source ourselves.
When should an attorney be involved?
If the seller disputes the judgment, if it arises from a case that is still active, if it involves a marital or support obligation, or if the homestead question is genuinely contested — those are legal questions with legal consequences. A Florida real estate attorney or the seller's litigation counsel should be handling them.
Common questions
Can the buyer just take the property subject to the judgment?
They can agree to almost anything, but they would be buying the lien along with the house, and a lender will not permit it. It is very rarely a sensible outcome for a buyer.
The judgment is old. Does it expire?
Eventually, yes. A recorded judgment is a lien for 10 years from the date of recording, extendable once by re-recording for another 10, and never a lien on real property more than 20 years after the judgment was entered (Fla. Stat. §§ 55.10, 55.081). But "old" is not the same as expired, and the arithmetic runs from the recording and the entry date, not from the date on the letter somebody was sent. We check it against the record.
Does a judgment against only one spouse attach?
Generally not, where the property is held by both spouses as tenants by the entireties — but "generally" is carrying weight in that sentence, and the qualifications are the useful part.
Florida treats entireties property as belonging to the marital unit rather than to either spouse separately: each spouse is seized of the whole, and the estate is not divisible to satisfy the obligation of one of them alone. That is the holding of Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates, 780 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 2001), resting on a rule Florida has applied at least since Winters v. Parks, 91 So. 2d 649 (Fla. 1956). Applied to a recorded judgment, the consequence is the one this question asks about: a judgment lien against one tenant alone does not attach to the entireties estate (Sharp v. Hamilton, 495 So. 2d 235 (Fla. 5th DCA 1986), approved, 520 So. 2d 9 (Fla. 1988)).
Four things have to be true before that rule does any work on a file, and each of them is a question of fact rather than an assumption:
- The property is actually held as entireties. Where a deed conveys to two people as husband and wife, Florida takes that as creating an estate by the entireties in the absence of express language showing a contrary intent (Bridgeview Bank Group v. Callaghan, 84 So. 3d 1154 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012)). How the deed reads is the starting point, not how the parties describe their ownership.
- The marriage was in existence when the property was acquired, and still is. The estate depends on the marital unit, so a divorce or a death changes the analysis — which is what Sharp was actually about.
- The debt is not a joint one. A creditor holding a judgment against both spouses jointly is in a different position entirely. And two separate judgments, one against each spouse and held by different creditors, are not a joint debt and cannot be added together to make one (Williams v. M & R Construction of North Florida, Inc., 305 So. 3d 353 (Fla. 1st DCA 2020)).
- It is a Florida judgment question. A federal tax lien is governed by federal law rather than by Florida's entireties rule, and nothing above answers it. It is something we look for on the search rather than something the entireties position disposes of.
None of this clears the record. The judgment is still recorded, still returns on a search, and is still a requirement on the commitment until it is disposed of. Where the position is that it does not attach, that position is documented on the file and signed off by the underwriter in writing before closing — the same way the homestead position is — rather than asserted afterwards. And where the marriage, the deed or the debt is genuinely in question, it belongs with the seller's own counsel.
Will the title policy insure over it?
The commitment will list it as a requirement to be satisfied. Whether an underwriter would ever insure over a judgment, and on what terms, is an underwriting decision made file by file.
The Best of the Best. smooth, quick and professional. Shevy handled a complicated closing with liens and judgments and cleared it all in recorded time and didn't delay closing. Also she has amazing communication.
Mendel Sperlin · January 2025 · Google review