The motion for rehearing in Florida civil practice has always existed at the procedural intersection between trial and appeal, serving as a mechanism through which parties ask the trial court to reconsider a ruling or to supply omitted reasoning before invoking appellate jurisdiction. For decades, it was treated as an optional step—a tool of prudence, not an instrument of survival. That perspective has changed.
In today’s Florida practice, the motion for rehearing under Rule 1.530 has become indispensable for the preservation of appellate rights where a final judgment or order lacks findings of fact required by statute, rule, or controlling precedent. Recent decisions, culminating in the Fifth District Court of Appeal’s opinion in David Platt v. Cape Marine Services, Inc., Case No. 5D2024-2990 (Fla. 5th DCA Oct. 24, 2025), again marks a decisive turning point in how courts and practitioners must understand the role of post-judgment rehearing. The practical message is unambiguous: failure to file a timely motion for rehearing when a judgment omits required factual findings now almost invariably constitutes a forfeiture of appellate review.
This shift did not arise in isolation. It follows directly from the Florida Supreme Court’s 2023 amendment to Rule 1.530(a), which explicitly codified the preservation requirement (“To preserve for appeal a challenge to the failure of the trial court to make required findings of fact in the final judgment, a party must raise that issue in a motion for rehearing under this rule.”). The rule now provides that to preserve for appeal a challenge to the trial court’s failure to make required findings of fact in a final judgment, a party must raise that issue in a motion for rehearing. This language, inserted in 2023 after years of inconsistent district court practice, was designed to eliminate ambiguity and standardize preservation doctrine across Florida’s trial and appellate courts. Its consequence, however, has been profound. Where once appellate courts might overlook the absence of a motion for rehearing in the interest of justice, they now treat that omission as jurisdictionally fatal to review of omitted factual findings.
To appreciate this transformation, one must recall the long-standing Florida doctrine that certain judicial determinations require express factual findings to permit meaningful appellate review. The archetypal example remains Florida Patient’s Compensation Fund v. Rowe, 472 So. 2d 1145 (Fla. 1985). In Rowe, the Florida Supreme Court established the lodestar method for determining reasonable attorney’s fees and required the trial court to make explicit findings as to the reasonable hourly rate, the number of hours reasonably expended, and any enhancement or reduction factors. The Court reasoned that without such findings, appellate courts could not adequately review the basis of a fee award. This requirement has been reiterated in countless decisions over the past forty years and has come to define the analytical structure for all fee awards in Florida civil practice.
For many years after Rowe, the district courts routinely reversed or remanded attorney’s fee judgments that failed to include the required findings, regardless of whether the aggrieved party had filed a motion for rehearing. Cases such asGilliland v. Gilliland, 266 So. 3d 866 (Fla. 5th DCA 2019), Merriman v. Adler, 338 So. 3d 1084 (Fla. 5th DCA 2022), and Duke v. Duke, 211 So. 3d 1078 (Fla. 5th DCA 2017), exemplified this approach. The appellate courts treated the omission of findings as a reversible legal error apparent on the face of the judgment, one that did not require further preservation. The underlying assumption was that the trial court’s duty to make findings was self-executing; its failure to do so was inherently reversible because it prevented appellate scrutiny of the exercise of judicial discretion.
That assumption no longer holds. The Florida Supreme Court’s decision in In re Amendments to Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.530 and Florida Family Law Rule of Procedure 12.530, 373 So. 3d 1115 (Fla. 2023), fundamentally altered the preservation calculus. The Court’s amendment clarified that a challenge to the “failure of the trial court to make required findings of fact” must be raised in a motion for rehearing to be preserved for appellate review. The intent was to align Florida procedure with principles of judicial economy and trial court autonomy. The amendment recognizes that a trial judge should have the first opportunity to correct an omission or clarify a ruling before the parties resort to appellate review. As the Court observed in adopting the rule, the burden of calling attention to the omission rests with the litigant who will later complain of it.
This clarification also resolves an old tension in Florida appellate practice. Before the amendment, there existed a district-by-district divergence regarding whether the failure to move for rehearing waived review of missing factual findings. The Third and Fifth District Courts of Appeal had previously insisted that a motion for rehearing was necessary to preserve such an issue. Cases such as Broadfoot v. Broadfoot, 791 So. 2d 584 (Fla. 3d DCA 2001), and Mathieu v. Mathieu, 877 So. 2d 740 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004), held that absent a rehearing motion, an appellate court would not review alleged deficiencies in a trial court’s findings. Other districts, particularly the Fourth, took a more forgiving view. In Fox v. Fox, 262 So. 3d 789 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018), for example, the Fourth District reversed an alimony judgment lacking required findings even though no motion for rehearing had been filed. The Supreme Court’s 2023 amendment eliminated this inconsistency. The rule now makes preservation through rehearing mandatory.
A definitive application of this new regime appears in David Platt v. Cape Marine Services, Inc. There, the trial court awarded attorney’s fees to the prevailing party but failed to include any findings regarding the reasonable hourly rate, the number of hours expended, or the basis for the lodestar calculation. On appeal, the appellant argued that this failure mandated reversal under Rowe. The Fifth District rejected that argument, holding that because the appellant had not filed a motion for rehearing under Rule 1.530(a) to raise the omission before appealing, the issue was unpreserved and therefore unreviewable. In reaching that conclusion, the Fifth District explicitly recognized that its earlier decisions in Dunson v. Dunson, Merriman, Gilliland, and Duke—which had permitted direct appellate review of such omissions—were superseded by the 2023 amendment to Rule 1.530. The court aligned itself with the Fourth District’s reasoning in Jones v. Bank of America, N.A., 401 So. 3d 334 (Fla. 4th DCA 2024), which had similarly held that the required Rowe findings are “findings of fact” within the meaning of the amended rule.
The practical effect of Platt is unmistakable. The Fifth District’s opinion transforms the motion for rehearing from a discretionary safeguard into a procedural prerequisite. Under the new interpretation, the absence of a rehearing motion addressing omitted findings deprives the appellate court of authority to review the deficiency. The omission of findings may render the judgment incomplete, but the failure to move for rehearing renders the appellate argument forfeited. Thus, Platt has cemented the principle that appellate preservation now depends on counsel’s diligence in post-judgment practice.
This development places an additional responsibility on litigators at the close of trial. It is no longer sufficient to scrutinize a final judgment solely for errors of law or fact. Counsel must now review every judgment for the completeness of its factual findings, comparing the text of the judgment to the findings required by governing law. If any such findings are missing, a timely motion for rehearing must be filed within fifteen days of the judgment’s filing, as Rule 1.530(b) requires. The motion should identify the precise omissions and request that the court supply the findings or enter an amended judgment. Only by doing so does the party preserve the ability to argue on appeal that the judgment should be reversed or remanded for further findings.
The doctrinal rationale behind this rule is sound. By requiring a motion for rehearing, the Florida Supreme Court has emphasized the importance of judicial efficiency and procedural fairness. The rule ensures that trial courts have the opportunity to correct oversights that may have resulted from the pressures of trial or the complexity of the record. It also reduces the appellate courts’ burden of remanding cases for findings that could have been easily corrected had they been raised immediately. The amendment promotes a cooperative model of trial-appellate interaction, where trial judges are given the first chance to remedy their own omissions, thereby preserving the integrity of the record.
Yet the rule’s practical implications are sobering. For the litigator who fails to act, the consequences can be catastrophic. In fee litigation, for example, an award of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars may be insulated from review simply because counsel did not move for rehearing. The same risk applies to family law cases involving alimony or equitable distribution, where the governing statutes require express findings. It extends to statutory fee awards under section 57.105, where a trial court must find the absence of a justiciable issue, and to procedural dismissals governed by Kozel v. Ostendorf, 629 So. 2d 817 (Fla. 1993), where specific findings of attorney fault are required. In each instance, the absence of a rehearing motion will likely foreclose appellate scrutiny of the missing findings.
The shift also highlights the delicate distinction between two categories of appellate issues. The first concerns the failure to make required findings of fact; the second concerns the sufficiency of the evidence supporting existing findings. The 2023 amendment and subsequent decisions make clear that a motion for rehearing is required for the former but not the latter. A party may still challenge the sufficiency of the evidence under Rule 1.530(e) without filing for rehearing, but where findings are missing altogether, the motion is mandatory. This distinction, though subtle, is critical, and misunderstanding it can result in procedural default.
As Florida’s appellate courts continue to apply the amended rule, the importance of the motion for rehearing will only deepen. The 2023 and 2024 appellate opinions in Jones and Platt suggest a unified judicial commitment to enforcing the rule’s literal text. The appellate courts have signaled that they will not rescue parties from omissions they could have corrected through a timely rehearing motion. This is a reflection of the modern philosophy of procedural accountability: the appellate process is not a safety net for inattention at the trial level but a review mechanism for issues properly preserved.
For practitioners, the message is clear. The motion for rehearing is no longer a procedural courtesy. It is a strategic imperative. It should be viewed as a natural continuation of the advocacy that begins at trial and extends through judgment. Every final judgment should be examined not only for legal correctness but for completeness of factual findings. Where findings are absent, the attorney must act immediately. The fifteen-day period under Rule 1.530(b) is unforgiving, and missing it is tantamount to waiving the right to challenge the judgment’s factual foundation.
The transformation of the rehearing motion from discretionary to mandatory also underscores a broader philosophical trend in Florida civil procedure. Recent rule amendments—from proportionality requirements in discovery under Rule 1.280 to the active case-management provisions of Rule 1.200—reflect a statewide movement toward greater efficiency, accountability, and front-end control of litigation. The revised Rule 1.530 fits squarely within that trajectory. It shifts responsibility for completeness of the record to counsel and enforces discipline in the transition from trial to appeal.
Issues Not Waived by Omission of a Rehearing Motion
It is important, however, to emphasize the limits of this preservation requirement. The 2023 amendment to Rule 1.530(a) does not convert every conceivable appellate issue into one that must first be raised by a motion for rehearing. The rule’s language is intentionally specific: it applies only to a “challenge to the failure of the trial court to make required findings of fact in the final judgment.” It does not extend to claims of legal error, discretionary abuse, or evidentiary insufficiency. Nor does it apply to challenges to the correctness of findings actually made.
Thus, when a party seeks appellate review on the ground that the trial court misapplied the law, relied on improper evidence, entered judgment contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence, or committed procedural error during trial, those arguments remain preserved under traditional rules. A motion for rehearing may still be prudent in such instances, but it is not jurisdictionally required for preservation. The same is true of challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting existing findings in a non-jury case: Rule 1.530(e) expressly provides that such challenges “need not be raised in a motion for rehearing in order to be preserved for appeal.”
The key distinction, therefore, lies between an omitted finding and an erroneous finding. The former requires a rehearing motion; the latter does not. When a trial court enters findings that are legally incorrect, internally inconsistent, or unsupported by competent substantial evidence, those issues may still be reviewed on appeal even absent a rehearing motion. What the amended rule forecloses is the ability to complain for the first time on appeal that certainrequired findings were never made at all. The obligation to call such an omission to the trial court’s attention now rests squarely on counsel.
This distinction maintains coherence with Florida’s broader preservation doctrine, which continues to recognize that purely legal errors—such as misinterpretation of a statute, misapplication of precedent, or erroneous jury instructions—are reviewable if properly objected to at trial or presented in post-trial motions other than rehearing. The amendment to Rule 1.530(a) was never intended to displace that structure. Its purpose is corrective, not punitive: to ensure that when factual findings are required by law but omitted, the trial judge has the first opportunity to correct the deficiency before the appellate process is invoked.
In this sense, the rehearing requirement operates as a focused procedural safeguard. It does not bar appeals on issues of law or discretion. It simply closes the historical loophole that allowed appellate courts to reverse judgments for missing factual findings that were never brought to the trial court’s attention. The result is a narrower, more disciplined appellate record—one in which the trial court has been afforded the opportunity to complete its work, and the appellate court is confined to reviewing issues that were properly framed below.
The law of rehearing in Florida has entered a new era. The 2023 amendment to Rule 1.530 and its implementation in Jones and Platt have redefined the landscape of appellate preservation. For practitioners, the path forward is unmistakable. When a final judgment omits required findings of fact, silence is no longer an option. The motion for rehearing must be timely filed, precisely framed, and firmly rooted in the governing law. To fail to do so is not merely to forfeit an argument—it is to relinquish a client’s right to meaningful appellate review. In the modern Florida courtroom, the rehearing motion has become the last line of defense between judgment and finality.
