Florida Statute 732.2065
“Amount of the elective share”
What it means
One sentence of law: the elective share is 30 percent of the elective estate. The percentage is fixed — no sliding scale for the length of the marriage, no court discretion to raise or lower it. What varies case to case is the base: the elective estate assembled under §732.2035.
The election guarantees a minimum, not a bonus: property already passing to the spouse counts toward satisfying the 30 percent, so electing changes the outcome only when the spouse otherwise receives less than that.
- Elective share = 30 percent of the elective estate — a single fixed percentage.
- The base is the broad elective estate of §732.2035, not just the probate estate.
- Property the spouse already receives is applied toward the 30 percent — the election sets a floor rather than adding a bonus.
- The percentage does not change with the length of the marriage or the size of the estate.
How it plays out
The arithmetic is the easy part; the base is the fight. In our elective-share matters the dispute is almost never about the 30 percent — it's about what belongs in the elective estate and what the spouse has already received against it. We model both numbers before advising an election, because a spouse already taking more than 30 percent through joint accounts, beneficiary designations, and homestead gains nothing by electing — and an election carries deadlines and costs of its own.
Where this shows up
Pages on this site where § 732.2065 does real work:
Questions people ask
