Miami Asset Search

The Fortress: What Florida Law Actually Protects

Miami collection has a reputation, and the reputation is earned. Florida assembled, deliberately and over decades, the most debtor-protective framework in the country, and any honest Miami asset search begins by taking that framework seriously.

A homestead without a price

Under Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution, the homestead is exempt from forced sale and no judgment lien attaches to it, with narrow exceptions for taxes and assessments, purchase-money and improvement obligations, and labor performed on the property. There is no dollar limit. The measure is acreage: one-half acre of contiguous land inside a municipality, where the exemption is limited to the residence, or 160 acres outside one. A $40 million residence can be as protected as a bungalow, which is precisely why wealth relocates here.

Marriage as a shield

Florida recognizes tenancy by the entireties in both real and personal property. Where the six unities hold, possession, interest, title, time, survivorship, and marriage, the property belongs to the marital unit and is immune from the creditors of either spouse individually, and Florida law presumes that accounts held jointly by spouses qualify. A judgment against one spouse alone therefore bounces off properly held entireties assets, and litigating the presumption is usually a losing trade.

The Chapter 222 vault

Chapter 222, Florida Statutes, exempts the categories sophisticated planners actually use: the proceeds of annuity contracts and the cash surrender value of life insurance under sections 222.13 and 222.14, the wages of a head of family under section 222.11 subject to its statutory threshold and written-waiver mechanics, disability income, and a $4,000 wildcard under section 222.25(4) for debtors not claiming homestead. Money parked in these vehicles is not hiding; it is legally elsewhere.

Outside the Walls: What Miami Enforcement Can Actually Reach

The fortress has a perimeter, and Miami is unusually rich in property that sits beyond it. Reading the perimeter precisely is the entire value of this report.

Entity-titled real estate has no homestead. The constitutional text protects property owned by a natural person. Miami’s signature ownership pattern, the condominium or house titled in an LLC, a foreign corporation, or a layered structure, forfeits homestead protection by construction. Every entity-vested parcel in the tri-county sweep is flagged accordingly, then traced through Florida Division of Corporations filings to its officers, managers, and registered agents.

The half-acre excess is real value. Inside a municipality the protection stops at half an acre of contiguous land. Estate lots in Coral Gables, Pinecrest, and Palm Beach frequently exceed it, and the recorded plat and property appraiser data state the dimensions plainly. Second homes, investment condos, and short-term rental units are not homestead at all, and a subject claiming homestead in two places is a documented contradiction worth having.

Single-name and pre-marital assets sit outside the entireties shield, as does any jointly titled asset where the unities fail, most commonly because title arrived at different times or from different instruments. Title timing is a recorded fact, and the report presents it. Vessels, aircraft, and vehicles follow their own registries, covered below, and business interests, receivables, and the intangibles newly reachable under the 2023 lien expansion round out the reachable estate. The picture that emerges is consistent: Miami debtors are rarely judgment-proof; they are precisely protected, and precision cuts both ways.

Three Counties, Plus the Keys, Because Title Does Not Stop at the Line

South Florida wealth spreads across county lines as a matter of routine: the Brickell condominium in Miami-Dade, the Weston residence in Broward, the Wellington horse property in Palm Beach, the Islamorada dock in Monroe. Each county’s Clerk maintains its own official records, and a judgment lien on real property arises county by county through the recording of a certified copy under section 55.10. A one-county search in this market is a decision to miss things.

Every Miami report queries all four, then the remaining Florida counties through the statewide Florida search, then nationwide, because the same subjects hold New York co-ops, North Carolina mountain houses, and out-of-state entities with complete regularity.

Proceedings Supplementary and the Two-Lien System

Florida gives the judgment creditor a clean toolkit, and every piece of it is identification-dependent.

The real property lien arises when a certified copy of the judgment is recorded in a county’s official records under section 55.10, reaching the debtor’s non-homestead real estate in that county. The personal property lien arises from a judgment lien certificate filed with the Florida Department of State under sections 55.202 through 55.209, and the Judgment Lien Improvement Act of 2023 expanded that lien to categories of intangible property such as accounts, a quiet but consequential shift in the creditor’s favor.

The engine of Florida enforcement is proceedings supplementary under section 56.29: examination of the debtor, the impleading of third parties who hold or received the debtor’s property, and the unwinding of certain transfers, with Chapter 726, the Florida Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, supplying the framework when property moved at suspicious moments. Garnishment under Chapter 77 reaches accounts and obligations once identified. Each instrument shares one dependency: someone must first name the asset, the holder, and the county. That is the report’s job, and it is why Florida enforcement counsel order it before filing, not after. The judgment enforcement guide walks the full sequence.

Condos, Entities, and the Anonymous-Buyer Layer

No American market titles residential real estate through entities at Miami’s rate. Pre-construction condo purchases close in LLCs as a default, foreign buyers layer holding companies for tax and privacy reasons, and federal anti-money-laundering authorities have for years applied reporting requirements to certain all-cash entity purchases in this market precisely because opacity was the point. For an investigator, the consequence is procedural, not moral: the deed index alone under-reports Miami ownership, and the work happens at the junction of official records, Division of Corporations filings, UCC records, and condominium association documents, where managers, registered agents, mailing addresses, and mortgage guarantors connect entities back to people.

The same junction is where transfer timing lives. A quitclaim into a new LLC recorded three weeks after service of a complaint, a spousal transfer recorded during litigation, a dissolution filed the month a judgment issued: each is a dated, recorded fact, and under Chapter 726 the timing itself is evidence. The report does not argue the inference; it hands counsel the instruments that make the inference available.

The Marinas and the Runways

South Florida is the recreational marine capital of the country, and the asset class is systematically under-searched. Documented vessels, which include most yachts of consequence from Miami Beach Marina to Fort Lauderdale’s waterways, record with the U.S. Coast Guard National Vessel Documentation Center, a federal registry no county search touches. State-titled vessels record with Florida’s titling system, and the two registries together are read in every Miami report, alongside marina and registration trails that place a hull behind a house.

In the air, Opa-locka Executive, Fort Lauderdale Executive, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach International support one of the busiest private aviation corridors anywhere, and aircraft register with the FAA under owner names that are very often entities. Both registries routinely surface seven-figure assets that a records search confined to the county line was never going to find.

What the Miami Market Sells, Read Carefully

The counter-position: tri-county plus the Keys instead of one county, Florida exemption law applied to every finding, the entity layer traced instead of skipped, and a documented source behind every line. The full standard is on what a professional asset search company delivers.

Miami Asset Search Questions

Authoritative Florida and Miami Sources

Every finding in a Miami asset search is attributed to their originating source. Primary references for Miami work include the official records of the Clerks of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe Counties, the county property appraisers, the circuit court civil indexes of the Eleventh, Seventeenth, and Fifteenth Judicial Circuits, the Florida Division of Corporations, Florida’s UCC and judgment lien registries maintained through the Department of State, the FAA Civil Aviation Registry, and the U.S. Coast Guard National Vessel Documentation Center. Statutory and constitutional authority cited on this page comes from Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution and Chapters 55, 56, 77, 222, and 726, Florida Statutes.

U.S. Asset Records has operated as a nationwide asset search service since 2018, working with law firms, collection agencies, and litigants in all 50 states, with reports prepared under FCRA, GLBA, and DPPA compliance standards. Sister company U.S. Title Records has provided property title and lien retrieval since 2009.

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