Walters v. Agency for Healthcare Administration · No. 3D25-0817 (Fla. 3d DCA) · Decided October 7, 2026
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The Legislature’s 2021 amendment to the cooperative statute providing that “An interest in a unit is an interest in real property” does not apply retroactively to the date of a decedent’s 2017 death, the Third District Court of Appeal has held. The court affirmed a Miami-Dade circuit court order ruling that the decedent’s cooperative unit was not protected by the Florida Constitution’s homestead provisions from forced sale to satisfy a debt to the Agency for Health Care Administration.
What Happened
Enid May Townsend died intestate on August 29, 2017. Her sole heir was her daughter, Pauline Walters, who in February 2018 petitioned for summary administration. The estate’s only asset was the decedent’s interest in a cooperative unit in North Miami Beach, which Walters proposed be distributed to herself as protected homestead property.
On March 21, 2018, the Agency filed a statement of claim for $81,276.76, representing the decedent’s debt from her acceptance of Medicaid benefits. Walters petitioned to determine the unit’s homestead status the next day. The Agency objected that the unit was “not a fee simple interest in land as required by law,” and on June 21, 2018, the trial court denied the petition, citing in part In re Estate of Wartels, 357 So. 2d 708 (Fla. 1978).
In the first appeal, Walters v. Agency for Health Care Admin., 288 So. 3d 1215 (Fla. 3d DCA 2019), the Third District affirmed and certified to the Florida Supreme Court, as a question of great public importance, whether Wartels had continuing effect, and certified conflict with Geraci v. Sunstar EMS, 93 So. 3d 384 (Fla. 2d DCA 2012). The Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction. While that review was pending, the Legislature added the real-property sentence to section 719.103(25)’s definition of “Unit.” The chapter law, Ch. 2021-99, was signed June 16, 2021, and took effect July 1, 2021. On June 23, 2021, the Supreme Court discharged its jurisdiction and declined review, and the Third District issued its mandate on June 30, 2021.
Walters then filed an amended petition relying on the amendment. The trial court found the change “is not remedial in nature, and is to be applied only prospectively,” and upheld its 2018 order. Walters appealed that non-final order.
What the Court Held
The only issue, the court said, was whether the 2021 amendment applies retroactively to the date of the decedent’s death. It held that it does not.
The court started from the rule that, absent clear legislative intent to the contrary, a law affecting substantive rights “is presumed to apply prospectively,” quoting Metro. Dade Cnty. v. Chase Fed. Hous. Corp., 737 So. 2d 494 (Fla. 1999). It found the amendment substantive: to the extent it makes cooperative units real property protected as homestead, it “expands the rights of owners and heirs of such property to be free from forced sale while commensurately diminishing the rights of their creditors to be paid,” and likewise expands the inheritance rights of spouses and minor children while diminishing owners’ rights to freely devise.
The court found “little evidence” of intent that the amendment apply retroactively. The Legislature gave the act a future effective date, and neither the amendment nor the chapter law states that it takes effect retroactively. The court rejected treating the amendment as remedial, noting that the Legislature never characterized it “as remedial or as a clarification of existing law.”
The court also addressed the “recent controversy rule,” under which an amendment enacted soon after controversies over the original act may be read as a legislative interpretation rather than a substantive change. It acknowledged that the sequence here — its prior opinion, the certification, the Supreme Court’s acceptance of jurisdiction, the amendment, and the discharge of jurisdiction — “admittedly move this case towards the ambit of this rule.” But it noted the rule’s validity “has been called into question by the Supreme Court and has been rejected by the Second District,” and held that in any event its application “does not change the result” given the substantive rights at stake, the future effective date, and the absence of any indication the Legislature viewed the amendment as remedial or a clarification.
This opinion does not certify a question or conflict. The certification described above was made in the court’s 2019 decision and concerned whether Wartels had continuing effect, not the retroactivity of the 2021 amendment.
Why It Matters
For a cooperative-unit owner who died before the 2021 amendment took effect, Walters holds that the amendment’s real-property sentence does not apply retroactively to the date of death, so the trial court’s ruling that this unit was not protected homestead stands. The court reached that result even while acknowledging that the case’s procedural history pointed toward the recent controversy rule.
The Opinion
Download the full opinion (PDF)
| Court | Third District Court of Appeal |
| Case No. | 3D25-0817 |
| Lower Court | Circuit Court, Miami-Dade County (Judge Bertila Soto) |
| Opinion by | Judge Logue (Judges Lindsey and Gooden on the panel; no separate opinions) |
| Decided | October 7, 2026 |
| Result | Affirmed |