Steady Guidance Through Florida’s Equitable Distribution Process
Dividing property can shape each spouse’s financial footing long after a marriage ends. A Jacksonville divorce lawyer at Tupper Law, P.A. helps clients identify marital and nonmarital assets and liabilities, determine appropriate values, and pursue an equitable distribution under Florida law. The firm handles these issues from mandatory financial disclosure through trial and, when warranted, appeal.
Why Jacksonville Clients Trust Tupper Law
Dividing property can expose disagreements that were easy to overlook during the marriage. A spouse may question whether an asset is separate, whether income or property has been disclosed, or whether a proposed value is reliable. When those disputes affect long-term financial security, careful preparation can make the difference between assumptions and evidence. Tupper Law offers:
- More than 20 years of legal experience. Attorney Michael Tupper has practiced in Florida since 2004 and brings extensive courtroom and non-jury trial experience.
- Recognition from The Florida Bar’s Family Law Section. He received the Florida Bar Family Law Section Rising Star Award for 2024-2025 and a Legislative Award for 2023-2024.
- Local professional involvement. He is a member of the Jacksonville Bar Association and served as a pupil of the Chester Bedell American Inn of Court.
- Trial and appellate experience. Michael Tupper handles family-law appeals, including challenges to property-distribution rulings affected by legal or procedural error.
- Deep Jacksonville roots. Born and raised in Jacksonville, Michael Tupper practices from the community he has long called home.
- Free consultations that are confidential and comprehensive.
When property, debt, and future financial security are all in dispute, details matter. Tupper Law works to build a clear record of what each asset is, what it is worth, and how Florida law should apply. That preparation supports informed negotiations, focused courtroom advocacy, and a final distribution grounded in the evidence.
What Counts as Marital Property in Florida
Florida’s equitable distribution statute sorts everything you and your spouse hold, assets and liabilities alike, into two categories, and that drives the case. The list below pairs each common item with the classification the statute assigns:
- Assets acquired during the marriage: Marital, whether by one spouse individually or by both jointly.
- Assets acquired before the marriage: Nonmarital, as is anything acquired in exchange for them.
- Retirement, pension, annuity, and deferred compensation accrued during the marriage: Marital, vested or not.
- An inheritance, a bequest, or a gift acquired separately from someone other than your spouse: Nonmarital, as is anything acquired in exchange for it.
- Income produced by a nonmarital asset during the marriage: Nonmarital, unless you both treated, used, or relied on it as marital.
- The rise in a nonmarital asset’s value caused by either spouse’s efforts during the marriage or by marital funds: Marital, though the underlying asset stays nonmarital.
- Real property you hold as tenants by the entireties: Presumed marital, whenever acquired; the spouse disputing that carries the burden of proof.
- Assets excluded by a valid written agreement: Nonmarital, on the agreement’s terms.
The line is rarely that clean in practice, because assets get commingled, retitled, and improved with marital money. Florida does fix when the sorting stops: the cut-off is the earliest of a valid separation agreement, another date that agreement sets, or the filing of the petition.
What the 2024 Amendments Changed
Florida rewrote parts of the law governing property division in 2024. The bill cleared the House 117 to 0 and the Senate 38 to 0, and it took effect on July 1, 2024 as the act that changed how these assets are classified and valued. Four changes come up regularly:
- A closely held business is valued at fair market value. The statute defines that as the price at which property would change hands between a willing and able buyer and a willing and able seller, neither under compulsion and both reasonably informed of the facts.
- Enterprise goodwill is a marital asset. Where goodwill exists apart from the continued presence and reputation of the owner spouse, the court must value it.
- An interspousal gift of real estate has to be in writing. One spouse cannot gift real property to the other without a writing that satisfies section 689.01, which requires a signed instrument executed before two witnesses.
- Inherited real estate can lose its protection. Real property received separately by bequest, devise, descent, or a gift from someone other than your spouse stays nonmarital only while legal title has not passed to you both as tenants by the entireties.
The act also reworked interim distributions. Florida has defined good cause for releasing money mid-case as extraordinary circumstances since 2008, but the 2024 act lowered the bar from circumstances that require a distribution to circumstances that justify one. The court must now weigh specific needs, including a repossession or foreclosure, the loss of housing, a default on a marital debt, a tax lien, a dependent child’s expense where nonpayment would harm the child, and attorney fees and court costs. It must also consider any other circumstance that justifies an interim partial distribution.
How a Court Decides What Is Fair
Florida is not a community property state, and it is not an automatic 50/50 state. A judge must begin with the premise that the distribution should be equal, then depart from it only where the relevant factors justify doing so. Those factors include:
- Each spouse’s contribution to the marriage, including child care and services as homemaker
- Each spouse’s economic circumstances
- The duration of the marriage
- Any interruption of a career or an educational opportunity
- The contribution of one spouse to the career or education of the other
- The desirability of keeping any asset intact and free from interference by the other spouse, including a business or professional practice interest
- The desirability of keeping the marital home as a residence for a dependent child
- The intentional dissipation, waste, depletion, or destruction of marital assets after the petition was filed or in the two years before it
In a contested case with no stipulation and agreement on file, the judgment must spell that reasoning out in written findings. Equitable distribution is settled before the court reaches alimony.
Contact a Jacksonville Property Division Attorney
Property division sets financial terms you will live with long after the case closes, and the record you build now is the record a judge will rule on. Contact our Jacksonville office to talk with Attorney Tupper about your family law matter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is property always divided 50/50 in a Florida divorce?
No. Florida law directs the judge to begin with the premise that marital property is divided equally, and permits an unequal division where the relevant factors justify one.
What happens to property I acquired before the marriage?
Property you acquired before the marriage is nonmarital, as is anything you acquired in exchange for it. That protection can erode. Where marital funds pay down the mortgage, the statute treats the principal paid from those funds, along with a share of the passive appreciation, as marital.
What date does the court use to decide which assets are marital?
The cut-off is the earliest of three events: a valid separation agreement, another date that agreement expressly sets, or the filing of the petition for dissolution.