FL SB 644 Attorney-Fee Reform Dies in Committee (2026)

SB 644 Attorney-Fee Reform Died in the Florida Senate

Florida's 2026 attempt to modernize how courts award attorney fees in divorce cases failed. SB 644 and its House companion HB 413 would have amended F.S. 61.16 to allow retroactive fee awards, codify the Rosen and Moakley factors, and let courts weigh rejected settlement offers. HB 413 passed the House 110-0, but SB 644 died in Senate Rules on March 13, 2026.

The News Hook

Every legislative session produces family-law bills that look promising, clear their early committees, and then quietly disappear. This year, the casualty was one of the more consequential family-law reforms in recent memory: a rewrite of Florida's attorney-fee statute for divorce, support, time-sharing, and parentage cases.

SB 644, sponsored by Senator Grall, and its House companion HB 413, sponsored by Representative Gottlieb, were titled "Attorney Fees, Suit Money, and Costs." Both amended F.S. 61.16 (the fee statute for dissolution of marriage, support, and time-sharing) and F.S. 742.045 (the parallel statute for paternity/parentage cases).

The bills had real momentum. SB 644 cleared the Judiciary Committee 11-0 and the Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice 7-0. HB 413 passed the full House 110-0 on February 4, 2026. Then both bills died in the Senate Rules Committee on March 13, 2026, when the committee never took them up before the deadline. No debate, no floor vote in the Senate, no explanation. The reform simply ran out of calendar.

What SB 644 Would Have Changed

The existing text of F.S. 61.16 gives a Florida court broad discretion to order one spouse to pay the other's attorney fees, suit money, and costs based on the relative financial resources of the parties. The controlling standard comes from Rosen v. Rosen, 696 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1997), which lets courts look beyond the raw need-versus-ability-to-pay comparison to consider the scope of the litigation and each party's conduct. But the statute itself has stayed thin, and appellate courts have split on how to apply it. SB 644 tried to resolve several of those splits at once.

Retroactive Fee Awards

The headline change addressed a 2024 conflict among the District Courts of Appeal. The First DCA had held that F.S. 61.16, as written, only contemplates prospective fee awards, because the statute speaks in terms of a need for immediate financial assistance and future access to counsel. Other DCAs disagreed. SB 644 would have written directly into the statute that attorney fees may be awarded both retroactively and prospectively as equity requires, ending the split in favor of the broader view.

Codifying Rosen and Moakley

The bill would have codified the factors from Rosen and from Moakley v. Smallwood, 826 So. 2d 1004 (Fla. 2002), which recognized a trial court's inherent authority to impose fees for bad-faith conduct. Putting those judge-made factors into the statute would have given trial courts and litigants a single, predictable checklist rather than a body of case law scattered across four decades.

Settlement Offers and Bad-Faith Litigation

SB 644 would have expressly allowed a court, when deciding entitlement to and the amount of fees, to consider whether a party rejected a good-faith settlement offer. It also would have let a court deny or reduce fees to a party who engaged in vexatious or bad-faith litigation, requiring written findings that identify the specific conduct at issue.

Civil Contempt and Priority of Support

Two further provisions carried real practical weight. First, when a party filed and prevailed on a motion for civil contempt, the bill created a presumption that the prevailing party recovers fees from the contemnor regardless of need or ability to pay. Second, the bill provided that payment of support owed to the obligee has priority over fees, costs, and expenses, and carved out an exception so the state could not collect its own fees ahead of a parent's child support in Title IV-D cases.

Florida-Specific Analysis

For Florida practitioners, the death of SB 644 means F.S. 61.16 stays exactly as it was, and the appellate split over retroactive fees stays unresolved. The practical effect depends on which District Court of Appeal governs your county. A litigant in the First DCA's territory faces a narrower reading of when fees can reach back, while litigants elsewhere may fare differently. That geographic inconsistency is precisely the problem the bill tried to fix.

This fee fight sits alongside Florida's broader family-law reform arc. The 2023 alimony reform, SB 1416, eliminated permanent alimony and reworked how courts award durational and other support under F.S. 61.08. Fee awards under F.S. 61.16 interact directly with those alimony outcomes: a spouse with fewer resources after an alimony ruling is often the same spouse seeking fees. Leaving F.S. 61.16 frozen while F.S. 61.08 has changed underneath it keeps a measure of tension in Florida's contested-divorce landscape.

It is worth being precise about the "fee split" language in coverage of this story. F.S. 61.16 has never split fees evenly between spouses. It shifts fees from the party with greater resources to the party with fewer, so both can litigate on a level footing. SB 644 would have refined how and when that shifting happens; it would not have created a 50-50 split.

Practical Takeaways for Florida Residents

If you are contemplating or in the middle of a Florida divorce, here is what the failure of SB 644 means for you.

• Nothing changed. The current version of F.S. 61.16 still controls fee awards in dissolution, support, and time-sharing cases, and the Rosen factors still govern.
• Retroactive fee awards remain uncertain in some appellate districts. If fees already incurred are a live issue, ask your attorney how your governing DCA handles retroactive awards.
• Fees remain need-based, not automatic. A judge weighs each spouse's financial resources; the higher-resource spouse can be ordered to contribute to the other's fees.
• Contested litigation is where fees explode. Every rejected offer, every discovery fight, and every contempt motion adds cost. The single most reliable way to control fees is to keep the case out of that arena.

That last point is the heart of our practice. Contested divorce is where attorney fees run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and it is exactly the scenario SB 644 was trying to make more predictable. An uncontested divorce sidesteps the fee-shifting fight entirely, because neither spouse is racking up litigation costs to shift in the first place.

At the Law Office of Antonio G. Jimenez, an uncontested divorce is a flat $750 attorney fee, whether or not you have minor children. The Florida court filing fee of about $425 and any notary charge are separate. If you and your spouse agree on the terms, you never enter the world of dueling fee motions and appellate fee splits that SB 644 was written to reform. If you are wondering whether your situation qualifies, our uncontested divorce checklist for Florida walks through the requirements, and our guide to converting a contested divorce to uncontested explains how to get there.

For readers following Florida's legislative and appellate developments, this session has been active. Compare the death of SB 644 with the failure of SB 1128 on time-sharing, covered in our analysis of SB 1128, and with the recent appellate turbulence on support in our coverage of the Sheff and Gaul alimony rulings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did SB 644 change Florida attorney-fee law?

No. SB 644 and its House companion HB 413 died in the Senate Rules Committee on March 13, 2026, without becoming law. F.S. 61.16 remains unchanged, and fee awards in Florida divorce cases still follow the existing statute and the Rosen v. Rosen standard.

What did SB 644 try to do?

It would have amended F.S. 61.16 and F.S. 742.045 to allow retroactive fee awards, codify the Rosen and Moakley factors, let courts consider rejected settlement offers, create a fee presumption for prevailing civil-contempt motions, and prioritize support payments over fees.

Who pays attorney fees in a Florida divorce right now?

Under F.S. 61.16, a court can order the spouse with greater financial resources to pay part or all of the other spouse's fees so both can afford representation. It is need-based, not an automatic even split. In an uncontested divorce there is typically no fee-shifting dispute at all.

Does this affect my uncontested divorce?

No. Uncontested divorces do not generate the fee-shifting disputes SB 644 addressed, because neither spouse is running up litigation costs. The Law Office of Antonio G. Jimenez handles uncontested Florida divorces for a flat $750 attorney fee, with court filing fees separate.

Could this reform come back in a future session?

Quite possibly. Bills that die in one session frequently return. Given that HB 413 passed the House 110-0 and SB 644 cleared its substantive Senate committees unanimously, a similar attorney-fee reform bill is likely to reappear in a future Florida legislative session.

Legal Disclaimer

This article is provided by Antonio G. Jimenez, Esq. (Florida Bar No. 21022) for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. Legislative status and case law can change. For advice about your specific situation, consult a licensed Florida attorney.