What Does a Florida Quiet Title Complaint Have to Contain?

What a Florida Quiet Title Complaint Must Contain

A Florida quiet title complaint is a pleading in circuit court that asks the judge to cancel a competing claim to land and declare the plaintiff the owner. Our Florida quiet title guide explains what counts as a cloud and what the judgment does, and how to file a quiet title action in Florida walks the case from the title search to the recorded judgment. The subject of this page is the document itself. Florida's quiet title statutes prescribe most of what goes in it, the civil rules prescribe the rest, and a complaint that is missing any one part draws a motion to dismiss before the case is a month old.

A complete Florida quiet title complaint contains the following.

1. The plaintiff's own title, deraigned. The chain traced from the original source or for at least 7 years before filing, with the book and page of every recorded instrument, unless the court directs otherwise or both sides claim from a common source.
2. A legal description that closes. Copied from the last recorded deed, and one a surveyor can locate on the ground, because the judgment will describe the land the same way.
3. Every defendant, with the cloud each one casts. Named from the title search, each with the instrument or interest claimed and where it is recorded, including the unknown heirs of a named person who died.
4. The statutory ground. The situation in Florida's quiet title chapter that the facts fit, pleaded in facts rather than in a label.
5. The prayer. What the court is asked to cancel, quiet and adjudge, written to match the judgment that will be recorded at the end.
6. Verification, exhibits and the sworn statement of diligent search. The recorded instruments attached, the complaint sworn where publication will be needed, and the search behind the affidavit written down.
7. The tax deed variation. A plaintiff suing on a tax deed deraigns only from the deed forward and pleads the tax deed section rather than the general one.

Each parcel is its own action. A 2016 decision from the Second District, told in what a quiet title action costs, held that six parcels with different facts are six lawsuits and six filing fees, no matter how neatly the counts are numbered.

Your Own Title, Traced by Book and Page

The deraignment paragraph is where downloaded complaints fail first, because it cannot be written without an abstract. Florida requires the plaintiff to deraign title (deraign is an old word for trace) from the original source or for a period of at least 7 years before filing the complaint, setting forth the book and page of the records where any instrument affecting the title is recorded. The court can direct otherwise on request, and a plaintiff who claims from a common source with the defendant can skip the paragraph, since both sides agree on the chain up to the point where it splits. Every other complaint sets out the chain instrument by instrument, with the grantor, the grantee, the date and the official records book and page of each one, ending with the deed to the plaintiff.

The reason is in what the judgment does. Where a default is entered, Florida's statute says no evidence need be taken, and the court enters judgment on the complaint and the affidavits in the file. A judge asked to declare that a person holds good fee simple title, with nobody on the other side, needs to see the title in the pleading. The title underwriter at the next closing reads the same file and asks the same question.

A 1990 case from the First District shows the difference between pleading the chain and proving it. A couple bought land in Holmes County in 1987 from a corporation called United Klans of America, Inc. Their chain began with a 1967 deed from a man named Bush to the trustees of an unincorporated group with a nearly identical name, United Klan of America. A veterans' post was on the land under a 1985 lease signed by one of those trustees in the name of the unincorporated group, and it would not leave. The couple sued to quiet title and for ejectment, and their complaint traced the chain from the 1967 deed to the trustees through the 1987 deed from the corporation to them. The post moved to dismiss three times, arguing that the chain as pleaded showed no valid conveyance from the 1967 trustees to the corporation that had sold to the couple, and the third amended complaint was dismissed with prejudice. The appellate court reversed. The complaint had deraigned the chain the statute required, and whether the couple could prove at trial that the trustees had authority to convey to the corporation was a question of evidence. In the court's words, “This is not the function of a motion to dismiss, wherein the sufficiency of the evidence which a plaintiff will be likely to produce in a hearing on the merits is wholly irrelevant and immaterial.”

The same opinion added that in a suit to quiet title the plaintiff “may allege the validity of his title in even more general terms, a mere allegation that he is the owner in fee of the lands in question being sufficient.” A complaint built on that sentence alone is a gamble. The additional-remedy statute that supplies most modern grounds requires the deraignment in terms, the judge who signs a default judgment signs on what the complaint says, and the underwriter who insures over the judgment reads the chain either way.

Practice pointer. Plead every link by book and page, including the weak one, and be ready to prove the weak one at trial. A gap in the pleading is a dismissal, while a gap in the proof is a trial, and a plaintiff would rather have the second problem than the first.

A Legal Description a Surveyor Can Close

The complaint describes the land by its legal description, copied from the last recorded deed rather than from the tax bill or the property appraiser's summary, and the judgment at the end describes the land the same way. A judgment that quiets title to a description the clerk's indexer cannot match to the parcel clears nothing at closing. The description also has to close, meaning a surveyor reading the calls (the bearings and distances that walk the boundary) arrives back where the description started. Florida treats a deed whose description is so vague that a surveyor cannot locate the land as a nullity, and a nullity in the chain cannot be pleaded around. A 1985 case told in full in what a quiet title action costs turned on a 1981 deed whose description omitted the east and south boundary calls, and the plaintiff who deraigned through it lost three acres to the holder of the first recorded deed that described them.

Two drafting habits follow. The description in the complaint is compared word for word against the recorded deed and against a current survey before filing, and where a deed in the chain does not close, the complaint asks the court to reform that deed in the same action, because a quiet title count alone will not fix it.

Practice pointer. Have the description in the complaint checked by a surveyor before the complaint is filed, since the judgment will carry whatever error the complaint carries, and a corrective deed is far cheaper than a second lawsuit.

Every Defendant and the Cloud Each One Casts

Florida provides that no person who was not a party to the action is bound by a judgment adverse to that person's interest. The judgment therefore reaches exactly the people the complaint names and the process server or the newspaper reaches, and nobody else. The defendant list is drafted from the title search, and it includes every person and entity whose recorded claim clouds the title, whether the claim is an unreleased mortgage, a judgment lien, a deed in a competing chain, or the interest of a person who died owning a share of the land.

Each defendant gets a paragraph of facts, and the facts are the cloud. The count identifies the instrument, its date, its official records book and page, and the interest the defendant claims or appears to claim under it. A name in the caption with nothing pleaded against it is a defendant the judgment will not bind, because a judgment removes the cloud the complaint alleged, and that defendant's cloud was never alleged. Where the person behind a cloud has died, Florida allows the complaint to name the unknown spouse, heirs, devisees, grantees, creditors and other parties claiming by, through, under or against that named person, and to name the unknown successors of a dissolved corporation, so the cloud is pleaded even when the names are not known. What Florida does not allow is a suit against the world at large with no named person or instrument behind the description, and the filing guide tells the 1948 case that settled it.

One more group belongs on the list. A person in actual possession of any part of the land is a defendant with a jury right on the possession question, and a complaint that names an occupant usually adds a count for ejectment so that the judgment carries possession as well as title.

Practice pointer. Draft the defendant list from the title commitment's exceptions and the probate index, and write the cloud into each count before the caption is typed. A defendant added by a later amendment costs a new summons, new service and, where publication is needed, four more weeks in the newspaper.

The Statutory Ground the Complaint Pleads

Florida's quiet title chapter offers more than one route to the same judgment, and the complaint says which one it is on by pleading the facts that fit it. The oldest section lets any person claiming legal or equitable title to land, whether in actual possession or not, sue any person not in actual possession who has, appears to have or claims an adverse estate, interest or claim in it, and it says in terms that it is no bar to relief that the adverse claim is void on its face or needs outside evidence to establish its validity. The owner or any prior owner who warranted the title may bring that action, which is how a seller ends up cleaning up a cloud after closing.

The additional-remedy section, which most modern complaints plead, lists three situations. The first is a person not the rightful owner who holds any conveyance or other evidence of title, or asserts any claim, which may cast a cloud on the title of the real owner. The second is a true and equitable owner whose record title fails because a recorded deed or mortgage was defectively executed through a missing seal, a lack of witnesses, or a defect in the wording of the acknowledgment, where the instrument was apparently made and delivered to convey the land. The third is possession held adverse to the record owner until it has ripened into title under Florida's adverse possession statutes. The same section carries the 7-year deraignment rule, the no-evidence default, and the provision that the recorded judgment vests title as though a commissioner had signed a deed, and it allows a jury to be demanded on possession where a defendant is in actual possession of part of the land.

The tax deed section is its own ground, covered below, with its own shortened deraignment and its single permitted defense. Which section the complaint pleads decides what facts the count has to contain, whether possession matters, and whether a defendant can demand a jury, so the section is chosen after the search rather than copied from a template's caption.

Practice pointer. A count that recites a cloud on title without pleading the facts of one of the statute's situations is the count that draws the first motion to dismiss. State which instrument is the cloud, why the person holding it is not the rightful owner, or which execution defect the plaintiff's own deed suffers from, in the plaintiff's own words rather than the statute's.

The Prayer and the Judgment It Produces

The prayer is the paragraph at the end of each count that says what the court is being asked to do, and it is drafted backward from the judgment the plaintiff needs to record. Florida's statute describes that judgment. Where the plaintiff proves legal title, or is the equitable owner on one of the listed grounds, or where the defendant has defaulted, the court enters judgment removing the alleged cloud, forever quieting the title in the plaintiff and those claiming under the plaintiff since the case began, and adjudging the plaintiff to hold good fee simple title to the land or to the interest cleared. The prayer asks for each of those things by name, identifies the instrument to be cancelled by its book and page, and, where an occupant is a defendant, asks for possession and a writ to enforce it. Once recorded in the county where the land lies, the judgment vests title in like manner as though a conveyance had been executed by a special magistrate or commissioner.

The civil rules say that every complaint is considered to pray for general relief, and a 2012 case from the Third District shows how little that sentence rescues. An easement dating from 1895 burdened a parcel in South Florida for the benefit of the neighboring land. In 2003 a man who owned the burdened parcel outright, and fractional shares of the neighboring parcels the easement served, filed a quiet title action to confirm his interests. The complaint never mentioned the easement, although a survey attached to it showed an alleyway running through the parcel. The parties stipulated to a final judgment whose metes-and-bounds description reserved no easement. Years later the company that had acquired the neighboring land sued to use the easement, and the trial court held that the 2003 judgment had extinguished it. The appellate court reversed, because an easement is a right distinct from title and nothing about it had been pleaded. “Thus, no issue relating to the easement was properly pleaded, and neither the parties nor the trial court were put on notice regarding any potential for the extinguishment of the easement. Under these circumstances, the trial court lacked jurisdiction to extinguish the easement.” The court added that to hold otherwise “would facilitate, if not promote, the taking of property interests by ambush.”

The lesson runs in both directions. A plaintiff who wants an easement, a restriction or any other recorded interest cleared has to plead it by book and page in a count and ask for its extinguishment in the prayer, on a ground the law recognizes, because an exhibit that happens to show it puts nobody on notice. An owner relying on somebody else's old quiet title judgment has to read the complaint behind it, since the judgment reaches only what that complaint pleaded, no matter how clean the description in the judgment looks.

Practice pointer. Write the prayer from the title commitment. Every exception the underwriter listed that the case is meant to remove appears in a count and in the prayer by book and page, and every exception that does not appear will still be on the commitment after the judgment is recorded.

Verification, Exhibits and the Affidavit of Diligent Search

Florida's quiet title statutes do not require the complaint to be sworn. Verification earns its place through the publication rules. Where a defendant cannot be served in person, the plaintiff serves by publication, and Florida makes a sworn statement a condition precedent to it. The statute allows that statement to be contained in a verified pleading or in an affidavit or other sworn statement, so a verified complaint can carry the sworn statement inside it, and many practitioners verify for that reason. The statement against a natural person has to show that diligent search and inquiry have been made to discover the person's name and residence, whether the person is over or under 18 if that is known, and that the residence is unknown, or is in another state or country, or that the person has been absent from Florida for more than 60 days or is concealed. A corporation has its own version, covering its name, domicile, status and the whereabouts of the people who could be served for it. The clerk then issues a notice of action within 60 days of the sworn statement, the notice runs once a week for 4 consecutive weeks, and the return day falls not less than 28 nor more than 60 days after the first publication. How long a quiet title action takes in Florida lays those floors end to end.

The words diligent search are the ones that get tested later. A statement that recites the statute and nothing else survives on its face, and a default entered on it can still be undone by the heir who surfaces after the property is sold, once it comes out that the tax collector's receipt or the probate file held an address nobody checked. The safer statement lists what was searched and what each search returned, so that the diligence is on the record before anyone questions it. Florida does provide that after final judgment no sworn statement is held defective for omitting a fact that otherwise appears from the record, which cures a technical omission and does not supply a search that was never made.

Exhibits carry the paper. The civil rules require that the documents on which an action is brought, or a copy of the material portions of them, be incorporated in or attached to the pleading, and they make an attached exhibit part of the pleading for all purposes. The instrument the case attacks and the deeds in the plaintiff's own chain are attached, and the same rule tells the drafter to avoid unnecessary recitals of deeds in the body, which is why a well-drafted count gives the book and page and lets the exhibit carry the text. An exhibit does not plead a claim on its own, as the survey in the 2012 case showed.

The lis pendens is a separate document rather than a paragraph of the complaint. Florida requires it to state the names of the parties, the date the action was filed or its case number, the court, a description of the property, and the relief sought as to the property, and an action has no effect on outsiders until the notice is recorded. Our guide to the Florida lis pendens covers the one-year clock and the bond fight.

Practice pointer. Write the sworn statement after the search, from the search notes, and keep the returned envelopes and the printouts in the file even though they do not go to the clerk. The person who will read that statement most carefully is the title underwriter at the next closing, and the second most careful reader is the lawyer for the heir who says nobody told him.

The Tax Deed Shortcut in Deraignment

A plaintiff who holds a tax deed pleads a different section and a shorter chain. Florida lets the grantee under a tax deed, or a successor, sue to quiet title against the holder of the record title and against any other person claiming an interest, lien or encumbrance in the land from before the deed issued, and it provides that when the action is based on a tax deed the complaint need not deraign title beyond the issuance of the tax deed. The complaint therefore begins with the tax deed, gives its date and book and page, and traces forward from there to the plaintiff. The former owner is limited to one defense, that the taxes had been paid before the deed issued, with the due process qualification that quiet title after a Florida tax deed sets out.

A 1972 case from the Second District settled how far back the tax deed plaintiff has to go. A woman held a tax deed and sued to quiet title, tracing her title from the tax deed forward and no further. The defendant argued that the statute's words, which excuse deraignment beyond the issuance of the tax deed, meant she still had to plead the chain before the deed, and that other people with interests from before the tax sale had never been joined. The court affirmed the judgment for her. The Legislature meant deraignment from the tax deed forward, and the point had never before been decided in Florida. On the second argument the court wrote, “It may be that other persons may still have an interest in the property which has not been quieted as against their claim, but this did not preclude the trial court from proceeding to final judgment against the appellant's interest, if any, in the property.”

The second half of that sentence is the part a tax deed buyer needs. The shortened deraignment saves the abstract work, and it changes nothing about who the judgment binds. A judgment against the former owner alone leaves a pre-sale mortgagee, a judgment creditor or a co-owner exactly where the sale left them, which for most of them is with an interest the tax deed cut off and the record still shows.

Practice pointer. Deraign from the tax deed forward, and build the defendant list from the clerk's tax deed file and the title search back through the former owner's chain. Every name on the tax collector's notice list belongs in the caption, because the recorded judgment is worth to a buyer exactly the list of people it binds.

What the Free Templates Leave Out

The sample complaints that circulate online are usually a caption, a jurisdictional sentence, a paragraph stating that the plaintiff owns the property, a paragraph stating that the defendant claims some interest, and a prayer. Read against the list above, the gaps are these.

• A blank where the chain goes. Most templates carry one sentence of ownership and no deraignment, because the drafter did not have your abstract. The 1990 case above turned on a chain that was pleaded link by link, and the pleading is what survived.
• A description copied from the wrong document. The tax bill and the property appraiser's page carry an abbreviated description, and the judgment will repeat whatever the complaint says.
• A defendant paragraph with no cloud in it. A count that says the defendant claims an interest, without the instrument and its book and page, pleads nothing the judgment can remove.
• A ground borrowed from another state. Samples written elsewhere pray for judgment against all persons claiming any interest, which Florida does not allow, and they miss the Florida situations the statute lists.
• A prayer written for a different judgment. A prayer that asks the court to declare the plaintiff the owner, and stops, does not ask for the instrument to be cancelled or for possession, so the judgment does not carry them.
• No sworn statement, no exhibits, no lis pendens. The template ends at the signature line, and the documents that make publication valid and give the case effect against a buyer are not part of it.
• No estimate of the value of the claim. Florida's graduated filing fee requires the plaintiff to estimate the amount in controversy in writing when the action is filed, and a template from another state has no place for it.

A template still has one use. Reading one shows the shape of the document, and the shape is the easy part. What decides the case is the abstract, the search for each defendant and the prayer drafted from the commitment, and each of those is written for one parcel at a time.

What Drafting the Complaint Costs

The clerk's share is fixed by statute, $395, $900 or $1,900 by the value of the claim you state in writing when you file, plus $4 and $10 for each summons, with the newspaper's charge added where a defendant has to be reached by publication. The drafting is priced by the title search, because the search decides how long the deraignment runs and how many defendants have to be found and served, and a complaint written before the search is the one that gets amended. What a Florida quiet title action costs sets out every number. Litigation is quoted per matter after the title search. The consult is free and takes 30 minutes, and it is more useful if you bring the title commitment or the complaint you were served.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The sample complaint with one sentence where the chain belongs. A man in Lakeland finds a sample quiet title complaint online to clear a mortgage his late mother paid off in 2006, and he files it himself. The title paragraph says that the plaintiff is the owner in fee simple, and stops. The lender's successor moves to dismiss for failure to deraign title, and the title search ordered to fix the pleading shows the house is still in his mother's name, because no estate was ever opened. The order of work becomes probate first, then a complaint that traces the chain by book and page, with the successor bank named from the merger records.

The judgment that did not reach the easement. An investor in Cape Coral obtains a quiet title judgment on a canal lot with a complaint that named the former owner's heirs and prayed for fee simple title. At the sale two years later, the buyer's title underwriter lists a 1979 recorded access easement in favor of the lot behind as an exception, because the complaint never mentioned it. The judgment cannot be stretched to cover an interest nobody pleaded, and a second action naming the neighbor, or a negotiated release from the neighbor, is the price of the omission.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §65.011 (jurisdiction; judgment quieting title and awarding possession); §65.021 (removing clouds; plaintiff whether in actual possession or not, against a person not in actual possession; no bar to relief that the adverse claim is void on its face or requires extrinsic evidence); §65.031 (the owner or any prior owner who warranted the title may sue; lands subject to a common defect may be embraced in one action); §65.041 (no person not a party is bound by an adverse judgment); §65.051 (joinder of plaintiffs against the same clouds); §65.061 ((1) jury trial in ejectment where a defendant is in actual possession; (2) grounds, namely a person not the rightful owner holding a conveyance or asserting a claim that may cast a cloud, a true and equitable owner whose record title fails for a missing seal, lack of witnesses or a defective acknowledgment on a recorded instrument apparently delivered, and adverse possession ripened into title; (3) deraignment from the original source or for at least 7 years, with book and page, unless the court otherwise directs or plaintiff claims from a common source with defendant; (4) judgment, including on default where no evidence need be taken; (5) recorded final judgments vest title as though a conveyance were executed by a special magistrate or commissioner; (6) cumulative to other remedies); §65.081 ((1) the tax deed grantee may sue the record titleholder and any person claiming an interest, lien or encumbrance before the deed issued; (2) the complaint need not deraign title beyond the issuance of the tax deed; (3) no defense except that the taxes had been paid before issuance). (retrieved September 15, 2026)
• Fla. Stat. §26.012(2) ((c) exclusive original jurisdiction in equity; (f) ejectment; (g) all actions involving the title and boundaries of real property). (retrieved September 15, 2026)
• Fla. Stat. §28.241(1)(a)2. (graduated filing fee for a civil action in circuit court relating to real property, $395 where the value of the claim is $50,000 or less, $900 where more than $50,000 and less than $250,000, $1,900 at $250,000 or more, each with not more than five defendants and up to $2.50 for each defendant in excess of five; the party estimates the amount in controversy in writing at filing and the clerk adjusts at final disposition; a $4 court education fee); §28.241(1)(d) ($10 for each summons issued). (retrieved September 15, 2026)
• Fla. Stat. §49.011(2) (service by publication allowed in actions to quiet title); §49.021 (upon whom, including the unknown spouse, heirs, devisees, grantees, creditors or other parties claiming by, through, under or against a known or unknown person known to be dead or not known to be dead or alive, and dissolved corporations and their unknown successors); §49.031 ((1) sworn statement as condition precedent, which may be contained in a verified pleading or in an affidavit or other sworn statement; (3) after final judgment no sworn statement is defective for omitting a fact that otherwise appears from the record); §49.041 (contents against a natural person); §49.051 (contents against a corporation); §49.08 (notice of action issued not later than 60 days after the sworn statement; contents); §49.09 (return day not less than 28 nor more than 60 days after first publication); §49.10(1)(a) (published once each week for 4 consecutive weeks); §49.12 (clerk mails the notice within 10 days where the residence is stated with more particularity than the state). (retrieved September 15, 2026)
• Fla. Stat. §48.23 ((1)(a) an action has effect as a lis pendens only if a notice is recorded; (1)(b) an action not based on a duly recorded instrument has no effect on third parties without one; (1)(c) contents, namely the names of the parties, the filing date or case number, the court, a description of the property, and the relief sought as to the property). (retrieved September 15, 2026)
• Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.110(b) (a pleading that sets forth a claim for relief must state a cause of action and contain a short and plain statement of the grounds of jurisdiction, a short and plain statement of the ultimate facts showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, and a demand for judgment; every complaint is considered to pray for general relief); Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.130(a), (b) (documents on which action may be brought, or a copy of the portions material to the pleadings, must be incorporated in or attached to the pleading; no documents unnecessarily annexed and no unnecessary recitals of deeds; an attached exhibit is part of the pleading for all purposes). Rule text verified September 15, 2026 at floridacourtrules.com.
• Fish v. Post of Amvets # 85, 560 So. 2d 337 (Fla. 1st DCA 1990) (a complaint that deraigned the chain from a 1967 deed to trustees through a 1987 corporate deed was sufficient; whether the plaintiffs could prove the trustees' authority was for trial, and a motion to dismiss does not test the evidence). Markley v. Madill, 259 So. 2d 723 (Fla. 2d DCA 1972) (a tax deed plaintiff need not deraign title before the issuance of the tax deed; judgment may be entered against the parties before the court though other claimants remain). Keys Island Properties, LLC v. Crow, 97 So. 3d 329 (Fla. 3d DCA 2012) (a quiet title judgment settles only what was pleaded and noticed; an easement mentioned in neither the pleadings nor the prayer survived it, and the trial court lacked jurisdiction to extinguish it). Mitchell v. Thomas, 467 So. 2d 326 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985) (a deed whose legal description a surveyor cannot locate is a nullity, and a deraignment through it fails; told in full on the cost page). Crescenzo v. Marshall, 199 So. 3d 353 (Fla. 2d DCA 2016) (six parcels with different facts are six separate quiet title actions; told on the cost page). Key v. All Persons Claiming Any Estate, Right, Title or Interest, 160 Fla. 723, 36 So. 2d 366 (Fla. 1948) (constructive service against unknown claimants of unknown claims, with no search, fails due process; told on the filing guide). Opinion texts on file, read September 15, 2026. Other parties' cases, not matters handled by this firm.

Where a Downloaded Complaint Comes Apart

The calls I take about this almost always start with a document somebody downloaded, and the title paragraph in it is one sentence long. In 14 years of law practice, I litigate probate, trust and deed disputes in court, and a title that fails is where many of them start. The three decisions above are the ones I go back to when a client asks why the complaint cannot be written before the search, because each one turned on a paragraph of the complaint rather than on the land. I have a few take-home points.

The first is the chain. The couple in the 1990 case had a weak link in their title, a 1967 deed to trustees that had to become a corporation's deed somehow, and they pleaded the link anyway, by book and page, and the appellate court sent the case back for trial because the pleading was complete. I plead the chain the same way, weak link included, because the alternative is a dismissal that never reaches the question of whether the link holds. Avoid a complaint whose title paragraph says the plaintiff owns the property in fee simple and nothing more, because that is the paragraph the other side moves against first, and a motion to dismiss is the cheapest motion in the case.

The second is the prayer. The survey stapled to the 2003 complaint in the easement case showed the alleyway, and it made no difference, because a survey is not a pleading and nobody had asked the court to do anything about the easement. When I draft a prayer I work from the title commitment, and every exception the client wants gone is named in a count and in the prayer by book and page. A judgment can only remove what it was asked to remove.

The third is who the judgment binds. The tax deed buyer in the 1972 case won her point about the short deraignment, and the court said in the same breath that other people might still hold interests the judgment had not touched. The short chain comes from the statute, and the defendant list stays as long as the search makes it. I build that list from the clerk's tax deed file and the search, because a judgment that names the former owner and nobody else is a judgment the buyer's underwriter will read as incomplete.

The honest limit is that a complete complaint does not make the title good. The couple in the 1990 case still had to prove at trial that the trustees had authority to convey, and the published opinion does not say how that ended. What the pleading decides is whether the case reaches that question at all, and a plaintiff who spends the money on the search first usually reaches it once.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The cases described above are published decisions of Florida courts rather than matters handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on September 15, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Title problems turn on the specific records and outcomes depend on the facts; past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.