Homestead wrongful death lawyer

Which Florida laws apply to a Homestead wrongful death claim

The rules are the same across Florida, so they are written out in full on one page rather than repeated here. They are explained on the statewide wrongful death page, with the statute text linked.

Florida’s Wrongful Death Act does something most families do not expect: Fla. Stat. § 768.20 says the action shall be brought by the decedent’s personal representative, who recovers for the benefit of the survivors and the estate. A spouse cannot file in their own name. Neither can a child or a parent.

So the first step is not a lawsuit. It is probate — opening an estate in the county where the person lived and having a personal representative appointed, which is a separate proceeding in a different division of the courthouse. The deadline for the claim itself is two years under § 95.11(5)(e), and it does not pause while an estate is being opened.

One exception is worth knowing. Section 95.11(11) provides that a wrongful death action against a natural person for an intentional tort resulting in death from acts described in § 782.04 or § 782.07 — murder or manslaughter — may be commenced at any time, and requires no arrest, no formal charges and no conviction.

What follows is the part that is specific to Miami-Dade County — where these claims arise, where you will be treated, which courthouse the case goes to, and how the records are obtained.

Somebody has to be appointed before anything can be filed

This is the part families are not told, and it comes as a shock in the worst week of their lives. Section 768.20 says a wrongful death action shall be brought by the decedent’s personal representative. Not by the spouse. Not by the children. Not by a parent.

Probate is a different division, a different file and a different set of forms, and until it produces letters of administration nobody has standing to file the claim.

For a Miami-Dade resident the Probate Court sits in Suite 6.223 of the Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center, 20 NW 1st Avenue, open weekdays from 9 to 4, reachable at 305-349-7492 or 305-349-7502. The clerk states the rule plainly: probate of wills and the granting of letters must be in the state and county where the deceased lived. The clerk’s published fees are $232 to open an estate, $236 or $346 for summary administration depending on size, and $401 for formal administration.

Start both at once. The two-year deadline on the claim runs while probate is pending, and the evidence a death case depends on — the vehicle, the scene, the camera footage, the maintenance record — is going the same way it goes in any other case.

Downtown for the estate, Cutler Bay for the claim

A South Dade death case is administered at opposite ends of the county, and it is worth knowing before anybody sets out. The injury claim, if it is filed, is usually heard at the South Dade Justice Center at 10710 SW 211th Street in Cutler Bay, a branch of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit.

The estate is not opened there. The Probate Court is downtown at 20 NW 1st Avenue, which from Homestead or Florida City is most of a morning rather than a short errand.

Which means two files, two clerks and two sets of deadlines. They are related only in that one produces the standing to pursue the other, and a family that assumes a single courthouse handles both loses time discovering otherwise.

And most injury claims never reach a courtroom anyway. They resolve with the insurer. Probate, by contrast, has to actually happen — there is no version of a wrongful death claim that skips it.

Probate follows where the person lived, not where they died

US-1 below Florida City is the only highway to the Keys, which means South Dade sees fatal crashes involving people who live somewhere else. Monroe County residents heading home. Out-of-state visitors in rentals. People from the north of the county on their way south.

Probate follows residence, not the location of the death. A Key Largo resident killed on US-1 in Florida City has an estate that is opened in Monroe County, while the injury claim arising from the crash is a Miami-Dade matter. Two counties, two courts, one case.

For an out-of-state decedent it is more involved again. An estate may have to be opened where they lived, with an ancillary proceeding in Florida, and the sequence takes real time — time the two-year deadline does not grant.

This is the single most common reason a South Dade death case starts slowly. Not indecision by the family, but a procedural question nobody warned them about. It is also the reason to ask early, because the answer changes which court is approached first.

What a death case rests on, and what goes first

The evidence in a fatal case is the same perishable evidence as in any other, with the difference that nobody who can describe what happened survived to do it. Which puts the entire weight on the physical record.

The vehicle should not be released or repaired. It carries the speed, the direction and the mechanism, and an event data recorder in a modern vehicle holds information no witness can supply. Once a salvage yard has it, that is frequently the end of it.

The scene changes within days. Marks on the road, the sight lines, the lighting on an unlit stretch of Krome or Card Sound, and vegetation at an intersection. Photographs from the first week are the only record of what it was.

The Medical Examiner’s report is independent and important. In a death the office investigates, the autopsy is a factual account written by somebody with no stake in the civil claim, and it frequently establishes the mechanism and the timing more precisely than anything else available.

And anything commercial is a thread worth pulling immediately. A truck’s USDOT number, a company name on a door, hours-of-service logs, maintenance records. Those documents have retention periods, and the request has to go out before they expire.

One action, and a set of rules about who is inside it

The personal representative brings one action, not one per family member. Each survivor’s damages are claimed inside that single case, which is why the appointment matters so much and why the survivors are identified early rather than as the case goes along.

Who counts as a survivor and what each may recover is set out in the Act, and it is explained in full on the Florida wrongful death page. It is not intuitive, and assumptions about it are usually wrong in one direction or the other.

Where the death resulted from medical negligence, § 768.21(8) sharply restricts the recovery of noneconomic damages by certain survivors. That is a hard rule and it is better understood at the beginning than discovered at the end.

And where a governmental entity is a defendant, § 768.28(6) requires the claim to be presented in writing within two years for a wrongful death, and caps recovery at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident. In South Dade that comes up with the county, the city and the Jackson system.

Where the Homestead office is, and how to get there

DAPENALAW is at 100 NE 15th Street, Suite 210, Homestead, FL 33030, open Monday to Friday, 08:30 to 17:00. The direct number is (786) 900-0184.

The office is at 100 NE 15th Street in downtown Homestead, a short drive from the Florida Turnpike and from US-1, and minutes from the South Dade Justice Center. It is the closest office for Florida City, the Redland, Leisure City and Naranja.

You do not have to come in. The first conversation can be by phone or video, documents are handled electronically, and where an injury makes travel difficult the meeting happens where you are. The Homestead office is the closest one for Homestead, Florida City, Leisure City, Naranja, Princeton, Goulds, the Redland, Silver Palm and the area around Homestead Air Reserve Base. The Sunset Drive office in South Miami is usually the shorter drive from Kendall, Cutler Bay and the rest of the county.

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