The rest of what we have written about Florida. Every figure is quoted from Florida’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
- The divorce kit
- What it costs to file
- Child custody
- Child support
- Guardians ad litem and child representation
- Travel, custody and relocation
- Alimony
- Property, support and legal fees
- Protective orders
- Legal help you can afford
- Verified professionals
- What Divorce Actually Costs
- What Happens to the House in a Florida Divorce
Changing your name back in Florida
Whether you can get your former name back in the divorce itself — and what it costs in Florida if you miss that moment.
See a different stateFlorida
Social Security, the passport, and the order to do them in are identical in all fifty states and are on the main name-change page. This page is the part that is Florida-specific.
Restoring your name in the divorce
Florida restores a former name through the divorce itself, under .
Florida has no name-restoration section in its dissolution chapter. The full section list of Fla. Stat. ch. 61, Part I (61.001 through 61.455) contains no name provision, and Sec. 61.052 (Dissolution of marriage) says nothing about names. Restoration is instead requested in the dissolution petition and written into the final judgment, with the court acting under its Sec. 68.07 chancery jurisdiction over name changes. Fla. Stat. Sec. 68.07 confirms this indirectly and importantly: Sec. 68.07(2)(a) exempts a restoration from the fingerprint requirement (‘except if a former name is being restored’) and Sec. 68.07(4) provides ‘The hearing on a petition for restoring a former name may be held immediately after it is filed.’ Any source citing a specific Florida statute for divorce name restoration should be checked – none was found on a primary source.
Who may ask: either party
If the decree is already final
If the final judgment did not restore the name, the Sec. 68.07 petition is the route – and Florida makes it markedly easier than an ordinary name change. Sec. 68.07(2)(a): ‘Before the court hearing on a petition for a name change, the petitioner must have fingerprints submitted for a state and national criminal history records check, EXCEPT IF A FORMER NAME IS BEING RESTORED.’ Sec. 68.07(4): ‘The hearing on a petition for restoring a former name may be held immediately after it is filed. The hearing on any other petition for a name change may be held immediately after the clerk receives the results of the criminal history records check.’ So a former-name restoration skips both the fingerprinting and the wait. You still pay the circuit court filing fee.
Authority: Fla. Stat. Sec. 68.07
The separate name-change petition
This is the route if the divorce route is closed to you, or if you want a name that is not a former one.
- Statute: Fla. Stat. Sec. 68.07 (Change of name)
- Court: Circuit court (chancery) in the county where the petitioner resides
- Filing fee: varies by county – see notes
- Residency: Sec. 68.07(3)(a): the petition must show ‘That the petitioner is a bona fide resident of and domiciled in the county where the change of name is sought.’ No fixed minimum period is stated.
- Publication: No newspaper publication requirement appears anywhere in Fla. Stat. Sec. 68.07. Florida’s disclosure regime is instead built into the petition itself (which is a public record) and into mandatory post-judgment reporting: the clerk sends a report of the judgment to the Office of Vital Statistics and, within 5 business days, to the Department of Law Enforcement, which forwards it to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
- Background check: Yes for a general name change, no for a restoration. Sec. 68.07(2)(a) requires fingerprints submitted for a state and national criminal history records check before the hearing, ‘except if a former name is being restored.’ Prints are taken in a manner approved by FDLE, submitted electronically for state processing, then forwarded to the FBI; the results, which must indicate any sexual predator or sexual offender registration, go to the clerk and the court ‘shall consider the results.’ Sec. 68.07(2)(c): the cost of processing the prints and the checks is borne by the petitioner.
- Hearing: required
Official forms
- Fla. Stat. Sec. 68.07 – Change of name
- Fla. Stat. ch. 61 – Dissolution of Marriage (section list; note the absence of any name section)
- Fla. Stat. Sec. 28.241 – Filing fees for trial and appellate proceedings
- Florida Courts – Family Law Forms (Supreme Court approved forms; site is a JavaScript app, open in a browser)
What catches people out in Florida
Florida has no statutory publication requirement for a name change, so there is no publication exemption to look for and none exists. That also means Florida offers domestic violence survivors no name-change-specific confidentiality: the Sec. 68.07(3) petition is a public court record containing birth date, parents’ names, residence history and employment history. Nothing in Sec. 68.07 provides for sealing. Sealing would have to be sought under the general court rules, which we could not verified from a primary source here – recorded as unverified rather than as a ‘no’.
Contrary to a great deal of online guidance, there is no Florida statute that specifically authorizes a divorce court to restore a former name. The dissolution chapter simply has no such section. The authority is the chancery court’s general Sec. 68.07 jurisdiction, exercised in the dissolution case. Do not cite a chapter 61 section for this – none exists.
Sec. 68.07(2)(a)’s fingerprint carve-out for restorations, and Sec. 68.07(4)’s immediate-hearing rule, are the two provisions most worth quoting to a clerk who tries to send a divorced petitioner through the full fingerprint process.
filing_fee is recorded as county-varying because Sec. 28.241 sets fees as ‘up to’ amounts – $395 for an ordinary circuit civil proceeding (which is what a ch. 68 name change is) and ‘up to $295’ for a ch. 61 dissolution – and individual clerks add statutory service charges on top. No official county clerk fee schedule was reachable to give a named-county example; the three clerk URLs tried all returned 404.
must_request_before_final and court_discretion left null – no primary source states a Florida deadline or standard for restoration within a dissolution.
Sources for this page
- Restoration in the divorce: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0000-0099/0061/0061.html
- Restoring it after the decree: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0000-0099/0068/Sections/0068.07.html
- Filing fee: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0000-0099/0028/Sections/0028.241.html
Sources we could not reach when this page was built, listed so you know what was not checked rather than assuming it was: https://www.flcourts.gov/… – the Florida Courts site renders through JavaScript and returns no readable content to a plain fetch, so the Supreme Court approved family law forms (the 12.9xx series, including the dissolution petition and final judgment that carry the name-restoration request) we could not read or cited by form number; https://www.hillsclerk.com/Additional-Services/Court-Fee-Schedule – 404; https://www.myorangeclerk.com/Divisions/Family/Name-Change – 404; https://www.miamidadeclerk.gov/clerk/family-name-change.page – 404; This state was researched without web search (session search budget exhausted), so official pages had to be reached by direct URL; the Florida judiciary’s self-help pages are almost certainly richer than what is captured here.
Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date and how long it was live.