Florida Statute of Limitations Lookup Calculator

How this calculator works

Florida's master statute of limitations is F.S. § 95.11 — a single statute that enumerates the limitation period for nearly every cognizable civil action under Florida law. Every Florida civil claim starts with a § 95.11 routing question: which subsection applies, what is the limitation period in years, when did the cause of action accrue, and how does the F.S. § 95.051 tolling regime affect the running of the clock? This calculator answers those four questions for sixteen canonical Florida claim categories — written contract, mortgage foreclosure, real-property recovery, oral contract, fraud, property tort, products liability, professional and medical malpractice, personal injury, wrongful death, defamation, judgment enforcement, the construction-defect statute of repose, partition, and the UCC sale-of-goods-under-$5,000 sub-category. The output is the controlling subsection citation, the projected expiration date, the time-bar status, and a recommendation that routes the user to suit-now, monitor-the-clock, or counsel-for-equitable-arguments.

The 2023 legislative resets — HB 837 and SB 360

Two recent statutes substantially redrew the Florida SOL landscape:

• HB 837 (2023). Effective March 24, 2023, the omnibus tort-reform statute shortened the F.S. § 95.11(4)(e) negligence-personal-injury limitation period from 4 years to 2 years. The change applies to causes of action accruing on or after the effective date; pre-effective-date claims retain the prior 4-year period. The shortening dramatically compressed the pre-suit window for auto accidents, premises liability, and slip-and-fall — Florida pre-suit investigation typically runs 6 to 12 months, so plaintiff's counsel now must be filing-ready substantially earlier than the old 4-year regime allowed. The calculator surfaces the HB 837 boundary in the personal-injury recommendation: claims accruing before March 24, 2023 are flagged as subject to the old 4-year period, and claims straddling the boundary trigger an explicit warning.
• SB 360 (2023). Effective April 13, 2023, the construction-defect-reform statute shortened the F.S. § 95.11(3)(c) statute of repose from 10 years to 7 years and tightened the accrual rules. The 7-year repose clock runs from the earliest of (a) the temporary certificate of occupancy, (b) the certificate of occupancy, (c) the certificate of completion, or (d) the date of abandonment if construction is not completed. Latent defects discovered late in the prior 10-year window are now barred — a defect discovered in year 9 of a 2018-completed project is actionable under the old regime but dead under the new 7-year repose. F.S. § 558 still requires a 60-day pre-suit notice before filing the construction-defect action, so the filing window is functionally less than 7 years.

The Bartram doctrine and mortgage foreclosure

The Florida Supreme Court's decision in Bartram v. U.S. Bank, 211 So. 3d 1009 (Fla. 2016) is the dominant doctrinal overlay on mortgage foreclosure SOL. Each missed mortgage payment is treated as a separate breach with its own 5-year clock under F.S. § 95.11(2)(c). Practical effect: dismissal of an earlier foreclosure does not bar a later foreclosure on subsequent defaults. A lender whose first foreclosure was dismissed without prejudice in 2018 (after 6 years of default) can file a new foreclosure in 2024 based on payments missed from 2019 forward; the new defaults each carry their own 5-year SOL that has not run. The Bartram doctrine means SOL is rarely a complete defense in long-default mortgage cases — it usually limits the recoverable arrears rather than barring the foreclosure entirely. The calculator flags Bartram in the recommendation whenever the user selects the mortgage-foreclosure claim type.

The discovery rule

The discovery rule shifts accrual from the date of the wrongful act to the date the cause of action was or should have been discovered by reasonable diligence. The rule is express in F.S. § 95.11(3)(j) (fraud), F.S. § 95.11(3)(e) (products liability), F.S. § 95.11(4)(a) (professional malpractice), and F.S. § 95.11(4)(b) (medical malpractice). Florida case law reads the rule into a few other subsections for latent construction defects and certain real-property torts. The rule is not available for written-contract, oral-contract, mortgage foreclosure, property tort (trespass / conversion), defamation, or wrongful-death claims — for those, the clock runs from the date of the act regardless of when the plaintiff knew.

The discovery rule does not extend the absolute outer bars imposed by Florida's statutes of repose under F.S. § 95.031: 12 years for fraud, 12 years for products liability from delivery to first purchaser, 4 to 7 years for medical malpractice depending on the exception. A claim that is timely under the discovery-rule SOL but barred by the repose is dead.

Tolling under F.S. § 95.051

F.S. § 95.051 codifies the tolling doctrines that pause the running of the limitation clock. The five most commonly invoked grounds:

• Minority. The clock does not run against a minor while the minor is under 18 (F.S. § 95.051(1)(h)); the clock starts when the minor reaches majority. The medical-malpractice subsection has its own narrower tolling regime for minors that the calculator does not model in full.
• Incompetency. The clock does not run against a person who has been judicially adjudicated mentally incompetent. Mere mental illness without adjudication does not toll the clock under Florida case law.
• Defendant absent from the state. F.S. § 95.051(1)(a) tolls the clock while a defendant is absent from Florida and not amenable to service of process. Florida case law has narrowed this rule substantially through the long-arm-amenability gloss: if the defendant could have been served under F.S. § 48.193, tolling typically does not apply. Practical effect: this ground is most often available against defendants who fled jurisdiction or who lack any Florida contacts.
• Payment on debt. Each payment on a debt restarts the limitation clock for contract-based actions (F.S. § 95.051(1)(f); incorporated from Florida common law).
• Fraudulent concealment. The clock does not run while the defendant is concealing the cause of action (F.S. § 95.051(1)(g)). The rule applies where the concealment is affirmative (not just silence) and the plaintiff exercised reasonable diligence.

Tolling is narrowly construed; the calculator extends the headline expiration by conservative placeholder amounts (5 years for minority or incompetency, 2 years for out-of-state defendant) and routes the user to counsel for the precise computation.

A worked example: 5-year written contract within the period

A Florida property owner signed a written contract with a roofer in January 2024 for a tile roof replacement. The roofer abandoned the job mid-installation in March 2024 leaving exposed framing. The owner wants to sue for breach of contract in May 2026.

• Claim type: written contract under F.S. § 95.11(2)(b); 5-year limitation.
• Accrual date: March 2024 (date of breach / abandonment).
• Projected expiration: March 2029.
• Time-bar status: ~34 months remaining (~2.9 years); neutral tone.
• Recommendation: monitor the clock; well within the period. Preserve documents (signed contract, payment receipts, photos of the abandoned work, communications with the roofer), retain counsel for demand-letter / pre-suit work, plan filing milestones well in advance of expiration.

A worked example: time-barred 2-year personal injury (post HB 837)

A Florida driver was rear-ended in a parking-lot accident in June 2023 — three months after the HB 837 effective date of March 24, 2023. The driver suffered a soft-tissue neck injury, treated conservatively, and never filed a claim. The driver consults counsel in May 2026.

• Claim type: personal injury under F.S. § 95.11(4)(e), as amended by HB 837 (2023); 2-year limitation.
• Accrual date: June 2023.
• Projected expiration: June 2025.
• Time-bar status: approximately 11 months past expiration; caution tone.
• Recommendation: the claim is presumptively time-barred. Counsel should evaluate equitable estoppel, fraudulent concealment, and any tolling grounds before walking away — but the starting presumption is the claim is dead. If the accrual had been before March 24, 2023, the 4-year period would still be running and the claim would be timely; the HB 837 boundary is decisive.

What this calculator does not do

This calculator is a planning-stage lookup tool. It does not replace Florida counsel — limitation analysis turns on fact-specific accrual determinations, the availability of equitable doctrines (estoppel, concealment), the precise tolling computation under § 95.051, and the interaction with statutes of repose under § 95.031. It does not model every Florida limitation period (specialty statutes covering RICO, FDUTPA, securities, civil rights, and certain administrative claims have their own SOLs outside § 95.11). It does not compute the tolling extension with precision — the placeholders are conservative and surface tolling availability without over-claiming. And it does not evaluate equitable estoppel or fraudulent concealment counterarguments to an apparently time-barred claim — those are fact-bound and require counsel.

How this page is maintained

The core F.S. § 95.11 subsection assignments have been stable in their structure for decades, but the two 2023 legislative resets — HB 837 (2-year personal injury) and SB 360 (7-year construction-defect repose) — substantively rewrote the landscape and continue to generate appellate decisions on accrual-boundary issues. The calculator's claim-type table is reviewed annually against the current codification and against Florida Supreme Court and District Court of Appeal decisions interpreting § 95.11 and § 95.051. Bartram (Fla. 2016) remains the dominant mortgage-foreclosure overlay; subsequent decisions have refined the payment-by-payment doctrine but not displaced it.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-15 against F.S. § 95.11 (master limitations statute), F.S. § 95.051 (tolling provisions), F.S. § 95.031 (statutes of repose for fraud and products liability), HB 837 (2023) (shortening § 95.11(4)(e) personal injury from 4 years to 2 years effective March 24, 2023), SB 360 (2023) (shortening § 95.11(3)(c) construction-defect repose from 10 years to 7 years effective April 13, 2023), and Bartram v. U.S. Bank, 211 So. 3d 1009 (Fla. 2016).