Your HOA wrote you up for a violation. The notice said the fine would be $100 per day until you cured. You took care of the underlying issue, or you didn't. Either way, weeks have gone by and the total is now in the thousands.
This pattern — the continuing-violation fine that snowballs — is one of the most common in Florida HOA practice. It is also one of the most legally vulnerable.
How the continuing-fine rule actually works
§720.305 treats a continuing violation differently from a one-time violation, but it does not give the HOA unlimited authority. The statute imposes hard ceilings:
- $100 per violation maximum for any single one-time fine
- $1,000 aggregate cap on continuing violations — the total amount the HOA can collect for a single continuing course of conduct, even if the underlying daily counter has been running for months
- A fine under $1,000 cannot become a lien against the parcel — full stop
When the daily accumulation exceeds the $1,000 aggregate cap, the excess is unenforceable as a matter of law, no matter what the declaration says or how long the HOA waited to send the bill.
The two-step procedural argument
A continuing-violation fine typically has two independent procedural problems:
Problem 1 — The 14-day notice still applies
Even for a continuing violation, the HOA had to give 14-day written notice and a hearing before the fine started accruing. If the HOA jumped straight to daily accrual without the notice + hearing procedure required by §720.305(2)(b), the entire fine is procedurally void from day one.
This is a common shortcut. The board sees an ongoing issue (a fence the homeowner refused to repaint, an unauthorized improvement) and starts running the daily counter immediately. They argue that the underlying violation is continuing, so notice is implicit. The statute does not allow that. Notice and hearing are still required.
Problem 2 — The $1,000 aggregate cap
Even if notice and hearing were proper, the running total cannot exceed the $1,000 statutory aggregate cap. A $100/day fine that has been accruing for 60 days = $6,000 — six times the statutory ceiling. The HOA can demand $1,000. They cannot demand more.
This is the math the HOA's attorney does not want to put on paper. Once a homeowner does, the demand reduces by operation of law.
Common cap-violation scenarios
The four patterns we see most:
- Six-month running fines. The HOA sat on the violation and let it accrue. The total is many times the statutory cap.
- Daily fines stacked on top of one-time fines. Same violation, two separate fines. Both apply against the homeowner. The aggregate cap covers both combined.
- "Compliance fees" added to the daily fine. Not authorized by §720.305. Cannot be added.
- Daily fines that continued after the violation was cured. The clock stops when the violation stops. Fines accrued after cure are not enforceable.
How to verify
Send a records request under §720.303(5)(a) for:
- The original written notice of the violation, with the postmark date
- The hearing notice and the minutes of the fining-committee meeting at which the fine was approved
- The accounting of the running total, broken down by day
- The dates the HOA contends the violation began and ended
- Any photographs, inspection reports, or other documentation supporting the violation
The HOA has 10 business days. The records will usually expose either the notice failure (Problem 1) or the cap violation (Problem 2), often both.
What to do this week
- Document the cure. If you have addressed the underlying violation, take dated photographs. The fine clock stops at cure.
- Calculate the cap. Look up the current per-day and aggregate caps in §720.305.
- Calculate the gap. What is the HOA demanding versus what the cap allows?
- Send a response letter with three demands: rescission of any portion that fails the notice rule, reduction of the remainder to the statutory cap, and confirmation that the fine clock has stopped as of the cure date.
- If the HOA refuses, escalate through the appropriate statutory pre-suit process. Fining disputes specifically go to mandatory pre-suit arbitration under §718/720 dispute-resolution rules (not the §720.311 mediation track that covers covenant-enforcement disputes). The wizard handles the citation routing in the response letter.
In our experience, continuing-fine disputes almost always settle at the response-letter stage. The HOA's attorney does not want to defend the cap math.
Skip the legal research. Give the wizard your facts and it writes the response letter — the $1,000 cap math, the §720.305(2)(b) notice argument, the demand language — cited, specific, ready to send.