3-day notices to pay rent or vacate in Florida

A 3-day notice to pay rent in Florida is the first step in evicting a tenant that is late paying rent.  It is a prerequisite to filing a legal eviction action.

Attorney Rob Solomon: The other thing I want to talk about are three-day notices, they come up all the time in Landlord-Tenant law. What is this three-day notice? Why am I always hearing that when we're doing eviction cases and three-day notices are the statutory requirement that has to occur and be served an a tenant, prior to evicting a tenant for failure to pay rent. What does this notice say? It is written in the statute or if you go and buy a set of forms from the local court house, you would find a three day notice in there, and it basically sets for the amount of rent and only rent which is, do not lay charges, not interest, not fixing the couch with the screw, the cat scratched it, none of that stuff, just rent and it gives the tenant three days which are set forth to pay up the rent that is owed or return possession.

This notice which seem so simple, is almost always the source of legal problems if there are going to be legal problems in an eviction, because our courts have decided on many things that you would only see if you wanted to be boring enough to look up and read decided cases of Florida law. For instance, your three day notice can only ask for rent. Your three day notice has to give a full three days not counting legal holidays, not counting weekends and not counting the day of service, that has to be done in that method and if it has to be served, if rent has to be paid out of county or to or to post office box, you have to figure in that the rent could be mailed and three day notices turn into eight day notices.

Three days plus five days, which is what the court has determined it takes to mail something, they turn into eight days notices. That is what a three day notice is and any landlord who is thinking about trying to collect rent, particularly if that rent is well over due, maybe you haven't collected the rent in a couple of months, your thought process is on how to construct three day notices and how to serve them and to do so properly, because you're not be able to proceed beyond that without first doing a three day notice. And by the way, the notice asked for; can you pay up the rent or give me possession back. And you would be happy probably if you are a landlord, if either of those two things occurred.