Motions for Rehearing in Florida: Rule 1.530 and What They Do to Your Appeal Deadline

Few procedural devices in Florida civil practice carry as much hidden power — and as much hidden danger — as the motion for rehearing under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.530. Filed correctly, it gives the trial judge one last opportunity to correct an error, preserves critical issues for appellate review, and suspends the deadline to appeal until the motion is resolved. Filed incorrectly, it does none of those things, and a litigant who believed the appeal clock was paused can discover — too late — that the right to appeal expired weeks earlier.

For litigants in the Miami-Dade Circuit and County Courts, whose appeals are heard by Florida's Third District Court of Appeal, understanding exactly how Rule 1.530 interacts with the appellate rules is not optional. This page explains the rule's text, its deadlines, its tolling effect, and the traps that routinely cost parties their appeals.

What Is a Rule 1.530 Motion for Rehearing?

Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.530 governs motions for new trial and motions for rehearing directed at final judgments in civil cases. In a jury case, the vehicle is typically a motion for new trial; in a non-jury (bench) case — which describes most family law, foreclosure, and equitable proceedings in Miami-Dade — the equivalent device is the motion for rehearing.

Under Rule 1.530, the trial court may open the judgment if one has been entered, take additional testimony, and enter a new judgment. In practical terms, a motion for rehearing asks the trial judge to correct a specific error before the case moves to the appellate court: an overlooked argument, a misapplication of law, a mathematical or factual mistake in the judgment, or — critically since the rule was amended in 2022 — the failure to make statutorily required findings of fact.

Two features of the rule deserve emphasis at the outset:

• Rule 1.530 applies only to final judgments and orders on post-trial motions. It does not apply to non-final (interlocutory) orders. A "motion for rehearing" aimed at a non-final order is treated as a motion for reconsideration, which has no tolling effect whatsoever. Review of non-final orders follows a separate track under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.130.
• It is a trial-court motion. A motion for rehearing filed in the appellate court after an appeal is decided is governed by an entirely different rule, Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.330. We address that distinct device on our page about motions for rehearing in Florida appeals.

The Deadline: 15 Days, Measured by Service

Rule 1.530(b) sets the deadline: a motion for new trial or for rehearing must be served not later than 15 days after the return of the verdict in a jury action, or the date of filing of the judgment in a non-jury action. Note three details in that sentence, because each one matters:

1. The deadline is measured by service, not filing. The motion must be served within 15 days. In practice, because service and filing occur simultaneously through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, the safest approach is to file and serve well before the deadline.
2. In a bench trial, the clock runs from the date the judgment is filed with the clerk — not the date you receive a copy, not the date of the hearing, and not the date the judge signed it. In Miami-Dade, the filing date appears on the docket. Check it the day the judgment issues.
3. The trial court cannot extend this deadline. Rule 1.530's time limit is jurisdictional in effect: an untimely motion is a nullity for tolling purposes, and no stipulation, agreed order, or plea for grace can revive it.

A Worked Example

Suppose a Miami-Dade circuit judge signs a final judgment after a bench trial and the clerk dockets it on Monday, June 2. Counting 15 days under Rule 2.514's computation rules, the motion for rehearing must be served by Tuesday, June 17. If the 15th day fell on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the deadline would roll to the next business day — but never rely on that cushion. A motion served on day 16 tolls nothing.

The Tolling Effect: How Rule 1.530 Suspends the Appeal Deadline

Here is where the trial rule and the appellate rules interlock. Under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.110(b), a notice of appeal from a final judgment must be filed within 30 days of rendition of the order. "Rendition" is defined in Rule 9.020(h): an order is rendered when a signed, written order is filed with the clerk.

Rule 9.020(h)(1) then lists specific "tolling motions" — including an authorized and timely motion for rehearing or new trial under Rule 1.530 — that suspend rendition. When such a motion is pending, the final judgment is not deemed rendered until the trial court files a signed, written order disposing of the last such motion. Only then does the 30-day window to file the notice of appeal begin to run.

The Full Timeline, Illustrated

Two refinements to this timeline: First, if the court grants rehearing and enters an amended final judgment, that new judgment generally becomes the operative appealable order, with its own rendition date. Second, the tolling ends only upon a signed, written, filed order. An oral ruling from the bench denying rehearing does not restart the clock — but do not wait passively; monitor the docket, because the written order often follows quickly.

The 2022 Amendment: Rehearing as a Preservation Requirement

Effective August 25, 2022, the Florida Supreme Court amended Rule 1.530(a) to add a sentence with enormous consequences: to preserve for appeal a challenge to the sufficiency of a trial court's findings in the final judgment, a party must raise that issue in a motion for rehearing under the rule. A parallel amendment was made to Rule 12.530 for family law cases.

This transformed the motion for rehearing from an optional strategic tool into a mandatory preservation step in a large category of cases. In Miami-Dade practice, the amendment bites hardest in matters where statutes require specific written findings — alimony, equitable distribution, child support deviations, attorney's fee awards under the lodestar framework, and injunction orders. If the final judgment omits required findings and you proceed straight to the Third District without first moving for rehearing, the appellate court will ordinarily deem the issue waived. Whether an omission of findings is properly preserved frequently determines whether there are viable grounds for appeal at all.

Five Traps That Destroy Tolling — and Appeals

1. The Untimely Motion

A motion served on day 16 is not merely denied — it never tolled rendition. The 30-day appeal deadline continued running from the original judgment date. Parties who wait for the court to rule on a late motion routinely discover that the appeal deadline expired while the motion sat pending. The Third District cannot extend the jurisdictional deadline, no matter how meritorious the appeal.

2. The Motion Aimed at a Non-Final Order

Rule 1.530 applies to final judgments. A "motion for rehearing" directed at an order denying summary judgment, an order compelling discovery, or any other interlocutory ruling is a mere motion for reconsideration. It tolls nothing. If the order is one of the enumerated non-final orders reviewable under Rule 9.130, the 30-day deadline runs from the order's rendition regardless of any pending reconsideration motion.

3. Successive Motions

Rendition is suspended only until disposition of the last authorized and timely motion. A second motion for rehearing directed at an order denying the first is unauthorized and provides no additional tolling. The clock started when the order denying the first motion was filed.

4. Confusing Trial-Court and Appellate Rehearing

Rule 1.530 operates in the circuit or county court. Once an appeal is decided by the Third District, rehearing is governed by Appellate Rule 9.330, with its own 15-day deadline and sharply restricted grounds. Filing the wrong motion in the wrong court accomplishes nothing. Our guide to the Third District Court of Appeal explains that court's procedures in detail.

5. Relying on the Motion Instead of Protecting the Appeal

When there is any doubt about whether a motion is authorized or timely — for example, uncertainty about whether the order is truly "final" — the conservative course is to file the notice of appeal within 30 days of the original order. A timely notice of appeal secures jurisdiction; a questionable tolling motion gambles with it.

Strategy: When Should You File a Rule 1.530 Motion?

A motion for rehearing is warranted when: (1) the judgment lacks statutorily required findings (now mandatory to preserve the issue); (2) the trial court overlooked or misapprehended a controlling legal point that a focused motion might actually fix; (3) the judgment contains computational or clerical-adjacent errors intertwined with substantive rulings; or (4) newly discovered evidence within the rule's contemplation exists.

It is generally not warranted merely to re-argue positions the court already rejected. A rehearing motion that simply repeats trial arguments rarely persuades the judge, delays the appeal by weeks or months, and can incur fee exposure. An experienced appellate practitioner evaluates, within days of the judgment, whether rehearing serves preservation and correction — or whether the better course is to proceed directly to the Third District.

Why Timing Analysis Requires Precision

Every date in this analysis is unforgiving. The 15-day service deadline under Rule 1.530(b), the rendition rules of Appellate Rule 9.020(h), and the 30-day jurisdictional deadline of Rule 9.110(b) leave no room for approximation. In our Miami appellate practice, the first task in every post-judgment engagement is constructing a verified timeline from the actual docket: when was the judgment filed, when was each post-judgment motion served, is each motion "authorized" within the meaning of the tolling rule, and what is the true last day to appeal. That analysis — done in the first 48 hours — determines everything that follows.

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