Updated September 5, 2026. Quick answer: Florida’s elective share is not the one-third-of-everything, marriage-length figure most national pages describe. flat 30% of the elective estate; no sliding scale by marriage length
What Florida actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| Fla. Stat. Sec. 732.2065 (amount) | “The elective share is an amount equal to 30 percent of the elective estate.” |
| The share and what it is measured against | flat 30% of the elective estate; no sliding scale by marriage length; measured against the ‘elective estate’; probate estate plus specified non-probate transfers/interests (revocable trusts, POD/TOD accounts, certain life-insurance/retirement interests). |
| Regime type | flat fraction, not tied to marriage length |
| Can it be waived | waivable before or after marriage by a signed written contract before two witnesses; fair disclosure required only if signed after marriage |
| Time limit to file | the earlier of 6 months after service of the notice of administration, or 2 years after the decedent’s death |
How it works in practice
- The share is measured against the ‘elective estate’; probate estate plus specified non-probate transfers/interests (revocable trusts, POD/TOD accounts, certain life-insurance/retirement interests).
- No. This state’s formula is deliberately built to reach revocable trusts, payable-on-death accounts and other lifetime transfers, precisely so the elective share cannot be defeated by moving assets out of probate before death.
- Waiver: Waivable before or after marriage by a signed written contract before two witnesses; fair disclosure required only if signed after marriage.
- The election has to be affirmatively filed on a deadline: the earlier of 6 months after service of the notice of administration, or 2 years after the decedent’s death.
The national picture, including the Uniform Probate Code sliding-scale schedule that a minority of states actually use, is on the elective share calculator page; this page is the record for Florida specifically, and its own numbers above should be used instead of the calculator’s national default for a Florida estate. The one thing that reliably defeats an elective share in every state that has one is explained on whether a prenup can waive the elective share. A newly widowed reader working through the fuller list of irreversible decisions, of which this is one, can start from the surviving spouse checklist.
What this page does not settle
- This session confirmed the core figure above against a primary or verbatim-mirror source, with one open point: Official flsenate.gov pages returned connection resets; quote sourced from florida.public.law, a verbatim statute mirror.
- A state can amend or repeal this section without the page around it changing, and a detail specific to a reader’s own situation, such as a pending divorce, a premarital agreement, or property held jointly with right of survivorship, can change which part of the statute actually applies.
- Whether a revocable trust changes the outcome in Florida is explained above; that answer is specific to this state and does not generalize to any other one.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on September 5, 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the exact dollar or percentage amount a court awards depends on facts this page cannot know.
Whether this statute reaches a given family’s actual facts is decided by a court, not by this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should sign a waiver or forgo an election on the strength of a web page.
Sources
The sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on September 5, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.