How Much Does a Partition Action Cost in Florida? The Whole Price List

Somebody in the family has said the word partition, and before anyone calls a lawyer you want to know what it costs. Fair question, and half of it has a published answer. The Broward clerk charges $1,906 to open a case on a house in the county’s median price range, $10 for each summons, $70 to run the sale and a percentage of the sale money for holding it. Those numbers are on the clerk’s own fee schedule and in the statutes behind it. The other half, the lawyers, is the bigger number and nobody publishes it. Here is the whole bill in the order you pay it, including the part of Chapter 64 that catches almost everyone: in a Florida partition case you can be ordered to pay a share of the other owners’ attorney.

Key highlights

• Filing has three price brackets. Broward’s schedule for a real property case reads $401, $906 or $1,906, set by the value of the claim. A Broward house near the county’s September median of $641,500 sits in the top one.
• Everybody pays a share of everybody’s lawyer. Section 64.081 binds every party to pay a share of the costs including attorney fees, apportioned in proportion to each owner’s interest. It is not a prevailing party statute.
• The clerk’s sale has its own toll booth: $70 to schedule it, documentary stamps at $0.70 per $100 of the final bid, and a registry charge of 3 percent of the first $500 plus 1.5 percent of every $100 after that, with no ceiling in the statute.
• Heirs property has a cheaper exit. Section 64.206 lets the owners agree a value and skip the court appraisal entirely, and section 64.207 gives the other owners 45 days to elect a buyout.
• Selling your share has no filing bracket at all. No summonses, no appraiser, no commissioners, no clerk’s percentage. The trade is the price of a fractional interest.

The short answer

What the state charges is public, and on an ordinary Broward house it adds up to a few thousand dollars before a lawyer sends a single bill. What the lawyers charge is not public, is almost always the largest line, and depends entirely on how hard the other owners fight. Anyone who quotes you a flat total before reading the deed and meeting the family is guessing. So do the part you can do: add up the hard costs below, decide whether a buyout at an agreed number is possible, and get a real figure for what your share is worth sold outright. Then you are comparing three real options instead of one fear.

What the clerk charges before anybody argues

A partition case is an ordinary circuit civil case about real property, so it takes the real property filing bracket. The Broward Clerk’s published schedule lists $401 where the claim is $50,000 or less, $906 where it is over $50,000 but under $250,000, and $1,906 where it is $250,000 or more. The statutory amounts behind those sit in section 28.241 at $395, $900 and $1,900, and the county schedule adds its own few dollars on top. Broward single-family homes closed at a median of $641,500 in September 2026, so most of the houses families argue over here land in the top bracket.

Then come the per-person charges, and this is where a big family gets expensive:

• $10 for each summons. One per defendant, and in a partition case every other owner is a defendant.
• $2.50 for each defendant past the fifth. Small, but it tells you the fee schedule assumes five and your family may not be five.
• $40 to the sheriff for each summons served. Section 30.231 sets it per summons or writ, with another $50 on a writ that requires a levy or seizure.
• $50 to reopen a closed case and $18 for a severance, two lines nobody budgets for and plenty of cases hit.

Six co-owners means six summonses and six services, so roughly $300 on top of the filing fee before anybody has disagreed about anything. Add a cousin nobody can find and you are into service by publication, which is a newspaper bill rather than a clerk’s fee.

If the filing fee itself is the obstacle, section 57.082 lets you apply to the clerk for indigent status. The test is income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines for your household size. Read the asset rule before you count on it: property with a net equity of $2,500 or more raises a presumption that you are not indigent, with your homestead and one vehicle worth up to $5,000 net left out. When the asset in question is a share of a house, that presumption is usually the problem.

The lawyers, and the line that surprises everybody

This is the part people get wrong, and it works in both directions. Section 64.081 says every party is bound by the judgment to pay a share of the costs, including the fees of the plaintiff’s or the defendant’s attorneys, set on equitable principles in proportion to each party’s interest and commensurate with the services rendered and of benefit to the partition. The same section lets the court order those costs and fees paid or retained out of the money arising from the sale, and it sends all state, county and municipal taxes due at the time of the sale out of the purchase money first.

In Casiano v. Casiano, 370 So. 3d 991 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023), the Fifth District put it in a sentence: this is not a prevailing party statute, and each party has a right to have the others share in its fees as well as a responsibility to share in theirs. Entitlement to apportionment is decided as a matter of law. How much, and split which way, is the trial judge’s call.

Two practical consequences. If you file, you are not funding the entire case alone, because the court can order your share of the fees paid out of the sale proceeds at the end. If you sit back and refuse to engage, you are not riding free, because you are a party and the judgment binds you to a share. The free ride people imagine does not exist on either side of the caption.

If it is heirs property: the appraisal, and the 45 day door out

Florida adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act in 2020, and it sits at sections 64.201 to 64.211. It applies where the house came down through a family without a will or a formal split, which describes most of the cases we see. The full machinery is in our guide to how a Florida partition action works. What matters for the bill is the valuation step and the buyout window.

Section 64.206 has the court appoint a disinterested Florida licensed real estate appraiser, who files a sworn appraisal. The court then sends every party with a known address notice within 10 days, objections are due within 30 days, and the value hearing happens no sooner than 31 days after that notice, whether or not anybody objects. Call it six weeks of calendar and an appraiser’s invoice that becomes a case cost under 64.081, which is to say partly yours whichever side you are on.

The cheapest sentence in the whole statute is in the same section: if all the cotenants agree on the value of the property, or on another method of valuation, the court adopts that value. No appraiser, no notice period, no hearing. The court can also set value at an evidentiary hearing where an appraisal would cost more than its evidence is worth. If the owners can agree on one number in writing, that is six weeks and a bill gone in an afternoon.

Then section 64.207 opens the door. Once value is set, the cotenants who did not ask for a sale have 45 days from the court’s notice to elect to buy the interests of those who did, priced off the determined value and the fractional share. The court sets a payment date no sooner than 60 days after that notice went out, and there is a further 20 day window to pick up a remaining interest if the first round leaves one. A buyout at the court’s own number ends the case before a broker, a commission or the clerk’s percentage ever appear on the bill. If no buyout takes everyone out, section 64.208 sends the court to partition in kind unless dividing the land would prejudice the owners as a group, and otherwise to a sale.

What the sale itself takes off the top

For heirs property the default is not an auction. Section 64.210 orders an open market sale unless the court finds sealed bids or an auction more economically advantageous for the owners as a group. The parties get 10 days to agree on a Florida licensed broker, and if they cannot, the court appoints a disinterested one. Either way the court sets a reasonable commission, and the statute puts no number on it. The property has to be offered at a price no lower than the court’s determination of value, which is a floor that protects you and can also leave the house sitting.

Outside the heirs property rules, section 64.061 has the court appoint three commissioners to make the partition, who take an oath, may employ a surveyor and receive a reasonable sum for their services. If the land cannot be divided without hurting the owners, the court may appoint a special magistrate or the clerk to sell it. Section 64.071 then runs the public sale and has the proceeds paid into court for division.

A clerk’s sale follows section 45.031: the judgment sets the sale not less than 20 days or more than 35 days out, the notice runs on a public website for at least two consecutive weeks or once a week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper with the second run at least five days before the sale, the high bidder posts 5 percent of the final bid, objections are due within 10 days after the clerk files the certificate of sale, and then the certificate of title issues. Now the charges:

• $70 to schedule the sale. Section 45.035 sets it, it is advanced by the plaintiff, and Broward’s clerk charges it again every time the sale is rescheduled.
• Documentary stamps at $0.70 per $100 of the final bid. Section 201.02 sets the rate and Broward rounds the bid to the nearest $100. On $641,500 that is $4,490.50.
• The court registry charge. Section 28.24(11)(a) sets it at 3 percent of the first $500 and 1.5 percent of each subsequent $100, and writes no ceiling into the statute. On a $641,500 bid that is $15 plus $9,615, so $9,630.

Broward has the winning bidder pay the registry charge and the stamps along with the balance of the bid, due by noon the next business day. Do the arithmetic from the bidder’s side and you can see what really happens at a courthouse sale: roughly $14,100 on top of a $641,500 bid, about 2.2 percent, before they have replaced a single shingle. They subtract it before they raise a hand, which is why court sales rarely produce retail numbers.

The Florida REALTORS table for Broward in September 2026 shows the gap plainly. There were 962 traditional single-family closings at a median of $645,000, against 8 foreclosure or bank-owned closings at a median of $444,500. Eight sales is a small number and a partition sale is not a bank repossession, so do not read that as your discount. Read it as a reminder that the people bidding at a courthouse sale are not the people touring houses on a Saturday.

What the waiting costs

Stack the statutory clocks and you have the floor, not the forecast. Ten days for notice of the appraisal, 30 to object, a hearing no sooner than day 31, 45 days to elect a buyout, a payment date no sooner than day 60, 10 days to agree on a broker, 20 to 35 days from judgment to sale, 10 days of objections after the certificate of sale. None of that counts the weeks spent serving six people, or the wait for a hearing date on a busy circuit civil calendar.

While all of it runs, somebody pays the property taxes, the insurance and whatever the roof decides to do. Section 64.081 settles the taxes out of the purchase money at the sale, which answers who pays in the end but not who writes the cheque this month. That is usually the owner living closest to the house, and it is usually the seed of the next argument.

Compare it with the market running alongside you. Broward’s September 2026 medians were 39 days from listing to contract, 77 days from listing to closing, and 95.6 percent of the original asking price received. An ordinary sale of a whole house, agreed between owners, finishes before a contested partition case has its first value hearing.

Your options, side by side

Five routes, with what each one actually costs you:

How a fast as-is cash sale works here

Two different things can be sold, and it is worth being precise about which. If every owner agrees, you sell the house, the title company handles the payoffs and everyone splits what is left. If they do not agree, you can still sell your own undivided interest, because a tenant in common owns a share that is theirs to convey. The buyer steps into your place as a cotenant and inherits the conversation with your relatives.

Either way the mechanics are deliberately boring. You describe the house and the ownership honestly, including who is on the deed, who lives there and whether anything has been filed. You get a written cash offer, usually inside about 24 hours. A Florida title company takes it from there: the title search, the probate and heirship questions, payoffs for any mortgage, taxes or recorded liens, and the deed. There is no lender, so no appraisal, no financing contingency and no underwriter deciding in week five. If the estate side is still open, start with selling a house in probate and the Florida specifics in selling an inherited house in Florida. For what a normal Florida closing costs the seller, line by line, see what a seller pays at closing in Florida.

How Sterling Home Offer helps

We buy single-family houses across Florida for cash, and we buy heir shares, which is the part most buyers will not touch. A no-obligation written offer in about 24 hours, built on the condition of the actual house and real nearby sales. Strictly as-is: no repairs, no cleanout, old roofs, tired kitchens, a relative still in the back bedroom. No agent commission and no fees, so the offer is the number you work from, and your date is the date. If you are the one owner who wants out while the others argue, the plain version is on our page about selling your share as an heir, and the wider state picture sits on our Florida cash buyer page.

The bottom line

The hard costs of a Florida partition case are knowable and, on their own, survivable: a filing bracket of $401 to $1,906 in Broward, $10 and $40 a head to serve, $70 to run a sale, stamps at $0.70 per $100 and a registry charge that takes roughly $9,600 out of a $641,500 bid. The unknowable part is the lawyers, and section 64.081 makes that everybody’s problem rather than just the filer’s. Which is the real lesson in the price list: the statute is built to push owners toward agreeing on a number instead of buying a judgment. An agreed value under 64.206 costs nothing. A buyout under 64.207 costs a deed. A contested sale costs a year and a share of two legal bills, and the house sells to whoever did that arithmetic before you did.

Sources

1. Broward County Clerk of Courts, Fees and Costs: a new real property or mortgage foreclosure case costs $401 where the claim is $50,000 or less, $906 where it is over $50,000 but under $250,000 and $1,906 where it is $250,000 or more, with $10 per summons, $2.50 for each defendant over five, $18 for a severance, $50 to reopen a case and a $70 foreclosure sale fee (Clerk of the Circuit and County Courts, Broward County)
2. Broward County Clerk of Courts, Circuit Civil: judicial sale bidders post a deposit of 5 percent of the estimated highest bid by 3 p.m. the business day before, the winning bidder pays the balance plus registry fees of 3 percent of the first $500 and 1.5 percent of each subsequent $100 by noon the next business day, documentary stamps are calculated at $0.70 per $100 of the final bid, and the $70 electronic sale fee is paid when the sale is scheduled and again on every reschedule (Clerk of the Circuit and County Courts, Broward County)
3. Florida Statute 64.081, Costs: every party is bound by the judgment to pay a share of the costs including attorney fees for the plaintiff’s or defendant’s attorneys, apportioned on equitable principles in proportion to each party’s interest and commensurate with the services rendered and of benefit to the partition, the court may order costs and fees paid or retained out of the money arising from the sale, and all state, county and municipal taxes due at the time of the sale are paid out of the purchase money (The Florida Senate)
4. Casiano v. Casiano, 370 So. 3d 991 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023): section 64.081 is not a prevailing party statute, each party to a partition action has a right to have the other parties share in its attorney fees and a responsibility to share in theirs, entitlement to apportionment is a matter of law and the amount rests in the trial court’s discretion
5. Florida Statute 28.241, Filing fees for trial and appellate proceedings: a civil action in circuit court involving real property or mortgage foreclosure carries a filing fee of $395 where the claim is $50,000 or less, $900 where it is more than $50,000 but less than $250,000 and $1,900 where it is $250,000 or more, plus up to $2.50 for each defendant beyond five and $10 for each summons issued (The Florida Senate)
6. Florida Statute 28.24, Service charges by clerk of the circuit court: for receiving money into the registry of court the charge is 3 percent of the first $500 and 1.5 percent of each subsequent $100, with no ceiling stated, and recording an instrument costs $5 for the first page and $4 for each additional page (The Florida Senate)
7. Florida Statute 30.231, Sheriff’s fees for service of summons and other process: $40 for each summons or writ to be served, with an additional $50 for a writ other than an execution that requires a levy or seizure of property (The Florida Senate)
8. Florida Statute 45.035, Clerk’s fees in judicial sales: a service charge of $70 for making, recording and certifying the sale and title, assessed as costs and advanced by the plaintiff before the sale, with $28 withheld from surplus funds and a $15 service charge for each surplus disbursement (The Florida Senate)
9. Florida Statute 45.031, Judicial sales procedure: the sale is set not less than 20 days or more than 35 days after the final judgment, notice runs on a publicly accessible website for at least two consecutive weeks or once a week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper with the second run at least five days before the sale, the high bidder deposits 5 percent of the final bid, objections are due within 10 days after the certificate of sale is filed and the certificate of title follows (The Florida Senate)
10. Florida Statute 64.206, Determination of value: the court appoints a disinterested Florida licensed real estate appraiser, sends notice to each party with a known address within 10 days of the appraisal being filed, allows 30 days for objections and holds a value hearing no sooner than 31 days after the notice, and adopts an agreed value where all cotenants have agreed on the value or on another method of valuation (The Florida Senate)
11. Florida Statute 64.207, Cotenant buyout: cotenants who did not request partition by sale may elect to buy the interests of those who did not later than 45 days after the court’s notice, the court sets a payment date not sooner than 60 days after that notice was sent, and a further 20 day window applies to a remaining interest (The Florida Senate)
12. Florida Statute 64.210, Open market sale, sealed bids or auction: a court-ordered sale of heirs property is an open market sale unless sealed bids or an auction would be more economically advantageous for the cotenants as a group, the parties have 10 days to agree on a Florida licensed real estate broker, the court otherwise appoints a disinterested one and sets a reasonable commission, and the property is offered at a price no lower than the determination of value (The Florida Senate)
13. Florida Statute 64.061, Partition and the appointment of commissioners: the court appoints three commissioners who take an oath, may employ a surveyor and receive a reasonable sum for their services, objections to their report are due within 10 days after service, and where the property cannot be divided without prejudice the court may appoint a special magistrate or the clerk to sell it (The Florida Senate)
14. Florida Statute 201.02, Documentary stamp tax on deeds and other instruments relating to real property: 70 cents on each $100 or fractional part of the consideration (The Florida Senate)
15. Florida Statute 57.082, Determination of civil indigent status: the clerk makes the determination, an applicant is indigent where income is at or below 200 percent of the current federal poverty guidelines, ownership of property with a net equity of $2,500 or more creates a presumption of non-indigency with the homestead and one vehicle worth up to $5,000 net excluded, and a party found not indigent may seek court review with no filing fee (The Florida Senate)
16. Monthly Market Summary, September 2026, Single-Family Homes, Broward County: 974 closed sales (down 7.1 percent year over year), median sale price $641,500 (up 2.4 percent), median percent of original list price received 95.6 percent, median time to contract 39 days, median time to sale 77 days, and a distressed table showing 962 traditional sales at a median of $645,000 against 8 foreclosure or bank-owned sales at a median of $444,500 (Florida REALTORS, via MIAMI REALTORS)