Your former spouse has stopped paying. The rent is still due, and you are wondering whether the judgment you spent a year obtaining actually means anything. It does. An alimony award in Florida is a court order, and it stays binding until a judge changes it. Missing a payment does not cancel it, and a private conversation between the two of you does not change it either.
The remedy is to go back to the court that entered the order and ask that court to enforce its own judgment. For a Tampa case, that is the Hillsborough County Circuit Court, Family Law Division, at the George Edgecomb Courthouse on East Twiggs Street. The usual filing is a motion for civil contempt and enforcement, and it opens a proceeding in which a judge decides why the money stopped and what happens next. Our post-judgment enforcement page explains how we handle these matters.
Start with the order itself
Before anything is filed, read the final judgment, the marital settlement agreement, and any order entered since. Three details drive everything that follows.
- The amount, the due date, and the duration the order sets.
- How payment is supposed to move: through the Florida State Disbursement Unit and the clerk's central depository, or directly between the two of you.
- Whether an income deduction order was entered at the time, and whether it was made effective immediately or only upon a delinquency.
That third point decides how much work is ahead. Many agreements settle on direct payment because it feels less adversarial at signing, and then there is no automatic mechanism standing behind the order.
The type of award matters less than most people expect. Florida rewrote its alimony statute in 2023, and permanent alimony is no longer available in cases filed on or after July 1 of that year. Bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative, and durational alimony remain, and a permanent award entered under the earlier law continues according to its own terms. For enforcement purposes they are all court-ordered support, enforceable the same way. How alimony is awarded in the first place is covered on our alimony page.
The motion for civil contempt and enforcement
Civil contempt in support matters is governed by Florida Family Law Rule of Procedure 12.615. The word contempt sounds punitive, but the rule is explicit that civil contempt sanctions exist to compel compliance with the order or to compensate you for what the nonpayment cost you.
The motion has to state the essential facts: the order that exists, what it required, and what was not paid. There is a Florida Supreme Court approved form for it, Family Law Form 12.960. The other party must receive notice and a real opportunity to be heard, and the rule requires that notice to carry a specific warning that failure to appear at the hearing may result in the court issuing a writ for that person's arrest.
What the court looks at, and why ability to pay is the crux
Rule 12.615 tells the judge exactly what has to be found before anyone is held in contempt. There must be a prior order of support. The payor must have failed to pay part or all of it. The payor must have had the present ability to pay. And the failure must have been willful.
The first two are usually a matter of arithmetic. The hearing turns on the third. A judge examining present ability looks at income from every source, at assets that could be reached, at the payor's own spending, and at whether any inability to pay was self-created. Financial affidavits, tax returns, bank statements, and business records do most of the talking. Someone who lost a job and has nothing to draw on stands in a very different place from someone whose income continued and whose priorities changed.
This cuts both ways, and it is worth knowing before you file. If the court finds a genuine present inability to pay, it will not hold the person in contempt. The money does not disappear, though. What accrued is still owed and can still be reduced to a judgment.
The remedies actually available
Contempt is one path inside a proceeding that carries several. A Florida court considering an enforcement motion can reach for any of the following.
- An income deduction order. Under section 61.1301 of the Florida Statutes, an order enforcing an alimony obligation carries a separate income deduction order, effective immediately unless the court finds good cause to delay it. The payor's employer deducts the support and sends it to the State Disbursement Unit, which disburses it to you. This is the most durable of the remedies, because it takes the monthly decision out of the payor's hands.
- A judgment for the arrears. The accrued unpaid amount can be reduced to a money judgment carrying the force of any other civil judgment, which opens the ordinary collection tools that follow a judgment.
- A continuing writ of garnishment. Section 61.12 allows a court to issue a continuing writ to an employer to enforce periodic alimony payments, for as long as the court sets. The same statute makes it contempt of court for an employer to discipline an employee solely because such a writ is in place.
- Attorney's fees and costs. Section 61.16 allows a court to order one party to pay the other's reasonable attorney's fees, suit money, and costs in a proceeding under the family law chapter, enforcement proceedings included.
- Coercive sanctions, including incarceration. These are available only on the findings described above, and any incarceration must come with a purge amount the person presently has the ability to meet, supported by a written finding and the facts behind it. If someone is arrested on a writ of bodily attachment, the rule calls for a hearing within 48 hours on present ability to pay the purge.
What contempt does not reach
Support obligations are a recognized exception to Florida's rule against imprisoning a person over a debt. Equitable distribution is not. If your former spouse also owes you an equalizing payment or was ordered to pay a marital debt, that obligation is generally enforced as a judgment rather than through the contempt power. Judgments that mix support with property division are common, and the two halves travel by different routes.
Realistic expectations about timing
Enforcement is a court proceeding, so it moves at the pace of filing, service, and a hearing date on a busy family division calendar. Nothing arrives the week you file.
Most alimony also sits outside the state collection system. The Department of Revenue's child support program takes on alimony enforcement where the alimony runs alongside an ongoing child support case. Where alimony stands alone, enforcement is something you or your attorney file and pursue in the family court.
Once an income deduction order reaches a stable employer, the change is quick and it holds. Where the payor is self-employed, paid in cash, or moving between jobs, there is no payroll department to serve, and the work shifts to locating income and assets. That takes longer, and you should hear so at the start.
If you are the one who cannot pay
If your circumstances have genuinely changed, the response is to ask the court to change the order, not to stop paying and wait to be summoned. A court's authority to adjust support generally reaches back no further than the date the request was filed, so every quiet month adds to an arrearage a judge cannot later erase. That is the path described on our post-judgment modification page.
What to gather before you call
- The final judgment, any marital settlement agreement, and every order entered since.
- The payment history from the clerk's depository if payments run through it, or your own bank and payment app records if they do not, with a plain list of what was due, what was paid, and when payment stopped.
- Whatever you know about your former spouse's current employment, business, or income.
- Any texts, emails, or letters explaining why the payments stopped.
You do not need all of it before you call. Bring the order and what you have, and the gaps can be filled from the court file and through discovery. Rechel & Associates has been serving Tampa Bay families since 1992, focused exclusively on divorce and family law, and returning to court to enforce a support order is ordinary work in that practice.