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No. Florida’s constitution protects your homestead from forced sale to satisfy a car accident judgment, and that protection has no dollar cap. What it doesn’t do is make the judgment go away, and a judgment that outlives your insurance can reach almost everything else you own.
It’s a question any Boca Raton car accident lawyer hears from people on both sides of a crash, and the answer comes down to three things: what Florida’s homestead protection covers, what your insurance is obligated to do, and how fault actually gets divided.
What does Florida’s homestead protection actually cover?
Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution exempts your homestead from forced sale, and no judgment or execution can become a lien on it. You will not lose your house to a car accident judgment, and unlike most states, Florida puts no ceiling on the value it will protect.
Limits exist here. The protection covers up to half an acre inside a municipality or 160 contiguous acres outside one. It applies to your homestead, meaning your primary residence, not a rental or a second home. And it has three exceptions: property taxes and assessments, obligations contracted for the purchase, improvement, or repair of the property, and obligations for labor performed on it. A car accident judgment is none of those, which is why it can’t force a sale.
If not your house, what can a judgment reach?
Less than people fear, and more than nothing. Florida exempts several categories outright:
- Retirement accounts: IRAs, 401(k)s, and other IRS-qualified plans
- A vehicle: up to $5,000 of your interest
- $4,000 of personal property: only if you don’t claim a homestead exemption
- Wages of a head of household: fully exempt at $750 a week or less, and above that unless a written waiver was signed
- Annuities and life insurance cash value
What’s left is genuinely exposed: bank and investment accounts outside retirement plans, second properties, business interests, boats, jewelry, and collectibles. Accounts get frozen and levied; property gets sold. And a Florida judgment lasts, staying enforceable for 20 years and accruing interest the whole time.
How likely is a claim to get past your insurance?
More likely than most drivers realize, because of what Florida doesn’t require. The state requires $10,000 in personal injury protection and $10,000 in property damage liability, and it does not require bodily injury liability coverage for an ordinary passenger vehicle. A driver can register a car here, drive legally for years, and carry nothing that pays for someone else’s injuries.
PIP covers an injured driver’s first $10,000 of medical care through their own policy regardless of fault, and one ambulance ride and an ER visit can exhaust it. Once their damages clear Florida’s permanent injury threshold, they can sue for medical costs, lost income, and pain and suffering. With no bodily injury coverage, no policy stands between that claim and the at-fault driver’s assets.
Your insurer has obligations too
Your policy owes you a lawyer. Auto liability policies carry a duty to defend, so the insurer hires and pays for a defense attorney if you’re sued over a covered accident. That’s included in the premium already paid, not something to arrange or fund. Anyone facing a claim should be talking to that attorney.
Your policy owes you a duty to try to settle. When a claim comes in that could exceed your insurance coverage limits, your insurer has a duty to try in good faith to settle within them. Florida law makes an insurer liable for failing to attempt in good faith to settle “when, under all the circumstances, it could and should have done so,” and the damages can include an amount that exceeds the policy limits.
In practice, an excess verdict often becomes the insurance company’s problem rather than the driver’s: if a carrier had the chance to settle inside the limits and didn’t, exposure can shift back to it. That’s why letters from an insurer during a claim are worth keeping, and why a notice about a settlement demand isn’t something to set aside.
How fault actually gets divided
Fault is decided from evidence, not from how the day felt, and it’s rarely all on one driver.
Florida assigns it by percentage. Since 2023, anyone found more than 50 percent at fault recovers nothing, but at exactly 50 percent recovery is still allowed, and every point below that line reduces an award rather than eliminating it. The math runs both directions: a speeding or distracted driver’s share of fault reduces what the other side owes.
Two things matter while a claim is open. Most policies require prompt notice to your own insurer, and late notice can jeopardize coverage. And while a driver has a contractual duty to cooperate with their own carrier, they have no such obligation to the other driver’s insurance company, including no obligation to give it a recorded statement.
Where to get answers about your own situation
The constitution will protect your home. Everything past that depends on specifics: policy limits, which assets you hold and how, and how fault gets divided once the evidence is in. If you’re facing a claim, the person to ask is the defense attorney your insurer is obligated to provide because that representation is already paid for.
Lytal, Reiter, Smith, Ivey & Fronrath represents people who were injured in crashes. If you were hurt in the same accident, there’s no fee to talk with us, and you pay no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered. Call us at (561) 655-1990 or contact us online for a free consultation.
