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By David deForrest
General Manager What is a "Legal Holiday" in Florida?This is an important question and one on which few people, including real estate agents and attorneys, are fully up-to-date. Time periods for performance of obligations, or for cancellation or withdrawals of purchase contracts are often stated as "Business Days" which are defined as excluding, "Saturday, Sunday and Legal Holidays." You may think that "everyone knows" what a "Legal Holiday" is but you will probably be in for a surprise if you are not careful. In Florida real estate purchase transactions are governed by Florida Statutes. Here is a list.
I'll bet you've never heard of half of these Legal Holidays, yet each one is a day exempted from the calculation when you are trying to determine the important dates for contract fulfillment etc. To make matters even more confusing, the Legal Holidays stated above are not the "Legal Holidays" you would need to use, as a Florida Landlord, in calculating the expiration date of the mandatory "3-Day Notice" you must give a delinquent tenant before proceeding to file suit for eviction! That's because the Florida Landlord-Tenant Act defines "Legal Holidays" not by reference to 683.01 above but in the following language:
Florida Statues 83.43(13) "Legal holiday"
means holidays observed by the clerk of the court.
Here is a list of Holidays observed by the Miami-Dade
District Courts in 2008. Note that this will vary from county to county and
from year-to-year:
Here is a
link to the Miami-Dade Clerk's web site which shows
the Legal Holidays recognized by the Clerk of the Court in Miami-Dade County.
If you own property in other counties, you should check with the Clerk of the
Court for the particular county where your property is located.
I hope this helps explain why we always recommend that Buyers, Sellers and Landlords use a Florida Attorney when making a purchase, a sale or enforcing the terms of a lease. These seemingly simple matters are not as simple as they might seem.
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