The FR44 Is Yours. The Policy Isn’t.
The FR44 requirement belongs to you personally. It is attached to your driver’s license, your driving record, and your three-year clock. But insurance companies do not insure people — they insure policies. And your policy covers every vehicle and every driver in your household.
So when Florida orders an FR44, what it is really doing is ordering your insurance company to prove that the policy carries much higher limits. Everyone attached to that policy comes along for the ride.
What Florida Actually Requires: 100/300/50
Under Florida Statute §324.023, an FR44 requires bodily injury and property damage liability of 100/300/50 — $100,000 for injuring one person, $300,000 for injuring multiple people, and $50,000 for property damage.
Here is why that lands so hard. If you were like most Florida drivers before the DUI, you carried state minimum coverage, which includes no bodily injury liability at all. Going from no bodily injury coverage to $100,000 per person is not a small step up. It is a different category of policy — and every car on it is now rated at those limits.
On top of the higher limits, a separate surcharge is applied for the DUI conviction itself. That is the double hit: bigger coverage for the whole household, plus a penalty on your record.
Option One: Split the Household Into Two Policies
The setup you have today — one policy, every car, every driver — is only one way to structure household insurance. In this situation it is rarely the smartest one.
Your policy carries the FR44 filing and the higher limits. Everyone else in the house moves to a separate policy written at ordinary limits and ordinary rates. The state gets what it requires from you, and your family stops paying for a conviction that isn’t theirs.
Option Two: A Non-Owner Policy
A non-owner policy covers you as a driver rather than covering a vehicle. If you qualify, it satisfies the state’s FR44 requirement without attaching those limits to a car at all.
The qualification matters, though. A non-owner policy only works if the vehicle you drive is not titled in your name and you are not its regular driver. If you are driving the same car every day, this is not your option — and a carrier that writes it anyway has set you up for a claim denial. We cover the details in our guide to FR44 insurance without a car.
Option Three: The Carrier You Choose
This is where most of the money actually is. Some insurance companies price FR44 business through the roof deliberately, because high-risk drivers are not the market they want. They are not trying to win your business — they are trying to make you go away.
Others specialize in FR44 filings and will write substantially better rates for identical coverage. Same limits, same filing, same state requirement, meaningfully different premium. If you have not shopped since the day you were required to file, you have no way of knowing which kind of carrier you landed on. Our walkthrough on switching FR44 carriers covers how to move without creating a problem.
The Mistake That Creates a Coverage Gap
Restructuring a household’s policies is not something to improvise. Insurers report filing status directly to the state under Florida Statute §324.0221. The moment an FR44 policy terminates without a replacement filing already active, the state sees a gap — and a suspension follows with no warning and no phone call.
The correct sequence is always the same: bind the new coverage first, confirm the filing reached the DHSMV, and only then cancel the old policy. A day or two of overlap is what keeps your three-year clock from resetting to day one.
Why Our Help Costs You Nothing
Every insurance policy has a commission built into it already. The carrier either keeps that commission or pays it to an agent. Your price is identical either way — which means using a specialist costs you nothing and gets your household looked at properly.
We look at who is on each title, what everyone’s record looks like, and which structure actually fits. Then we shop 15+ carriers and send the filing to the DMV the same day.
Related Guides
References
- Florida Statute §324.023 — Financial responsibility for bodily injury or death
- Florida Statute §324.0221 — Reports by insurers; suspension of driver license and reinstatement