Any landlord who has been unfortunate enough to have their eviction lawsuit dismissed will tell you that if you don’t get the 3-Day Notice correctly, you risk having to spend more money to re-file your lawsuit and pay your attorney’s fees. tenant. There are many nuances in this filing that will lead to the dismissal of your claim, but for the purposes of this article, we will specifically address when the Broward County Court requires an 8-Day Notice instead of the standard 3-day version.
Chapter 83, the Florida statute that all homeowners should be familiar with, provides legal guidance for filing a 3-day notice in Florida. Although the statute is designed to be simple, many jurisdictions have interpreted it in different ways, making it difficult for a non-attorney to successfully evict a tenant. Broward County is one of those jurisdictions where there is a division among the judges.
In Broward County, some judges will dismiss your case if you do not add an additional 5 days to the 3-day notice. Depending on which judge you get, this could end up costing you a lot of money. If your case is dismissed, you may have to pay the tenant’s attorney’s fees in addition to the cost of resubmitting the lawsuit. This is different from the prevailing jurisprudence in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and most other Florida counties that closely follow Chapter 83 guidelines.
Although the statute clearly states that you must give the tenant a 3-day notice, various judges in Broward County will require that the tenant receive an additional 5 days for mailing if you and the tenant live in different cities such as West Palm Beach, different counties or different states. In one case, the tenant and the landlord lived 2.3 miles apart. However, because they lived in different counties, the judge dismissed the case and ordered the landlord to pay the attorneys’ fees, even though the landlord complied with the statute. This may seem illogical or unfair to homeowners, but it is the state of the law in Broward County.
The solution seems clear to homeowners attempting an eviction in Ft. Lauderdale and Broward County in general. If you are not sure whether to post the 3-day or 8-day Notice, consider whether you and the tenant live in different cities, counties, or states. It is better to give 8 days advance notice and have a successful eviction, rather than risk having your case dismissed and paying attorney’s fees to the tenant.