Is 10/20/10 Enough Car Insurance in Florida If You Don't Own Anything? The Judgment-Proof Argument, Tested (2026)
By Ricardo Alonso, Founder, Atesa Risk Advisors · August 19, 2026
Key Takeaways
- Florida does not require bodily injury liability coverage to register a car. Registration takes proof of two things: $10,000 of personal injury protection (PIP) and $10,000 of property damage liability [1] [2] [3].
- The "10/20/10" everyone quotes is Florida's proof of financial responsibility standard — $10,000 per person / $20,000 per crash in bodily injury, $10,000 in property damage — the level the state demands after a crash or serious violation, not before [4]. After a DUI conviction, that jumps to 100/300/50 for three years [10].
- Cause a crash with injuries while carrying no bodily injury coverage, and the state can suspend your license and registration 30 days after the crash report unless you post security for the damages or get signed releases from everyone injured [5].
- If a crash judgment is entered against you and goes unpaid, your license and registration are suspended until the judgment is dealt with — and the judgment itself is enforceable for 20 years, accruing interest at 8.25% a year as of Q2 2026 [6] [7] [8].
- The honest core of the judgment-proof argument: a head of family whose disposable earnings are $750 a week or less is fully exempt from wage garnishment in Florida, and above that, garnishment generally requires your written agreement [9].
- A judgment for injuries you caused while driving drunk survives bankruptcy [11].
For a narrow slice of Florida drivers — no savings, no non-exempt assets, head-of-family wages under the garnishment exemption — carrying minimum limits is a defensible financial decision, and I will say that plainly. For everyone else, the judgment-proof argument fails on three specific facts: an unpaid crash judgment suspends your license until you deal with it, the judgment follows you for 20 years at 8.25% interest, and the argument only protects what you own today — not what the next two decades add. The lawsuit question is the wrong question. The right one is what an unpaid judgment does to your ability to drive, earn, and build anything at all.
Every few weeks someone asks me a version of the same thing: why would I carry more than the minimum when there's nothing to take? It is a fair question, it deserves a real answer instead of a scare quote, and the real answer runs through four Florida statutes most drivers have never read. Let's read them.
What Florida actually requires (it is less than you think)
Start with a fact that surprises people in both directions: Florida does not require bodily injury liability coverage to put a car on the road. Registering a vehicle requires proof of exactly two coverages — personal injury protection, which pays $10,000 toward your own medical bills and lost wages regardless of fault, and $10,000 of property damage liability for what you do to other people's cars and property [1] [2] [3]. Bodily injury coverage — the part that pays when you hurt someone — is checked at registration only "if required," and for an ordinary driver with a clean record, it is not [1].
So where does 10/20/10 come from? It is the state's definition of proof of financial responsibility: $10,000 per injured person, $20,000 per crash, $10,000 in property damage [4]. That is not the buy-in to drive. It is the standard the state demands you demonstrate after something goes wrong — a crash with injuries, certain suspensions and violations. And after a DUI conviction, the demanded proof is 100/300/50, carried for a minimum of three years [10].
| The standard | What it is | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| PIP $10,000 + PD $10,000 | Registration minimum — the legal floor to drive | Every registered vehicle [1] [2] [3] |
| 10/20/10 | Proof of financial responsibility | Demanded after a crash or qualifying violation [4] |
| 100/300/50 | Post-DUI financial responsibility | Three years after a DUI conviction [10] |
Notice what the floor covers: your own injuries (partially — PIP pays 80% of medical bills and 60% of lost income inside its $10,000 cap, and only $2,500 of it if your injury isn't an emergency condition [2]) and other people's property. The one thing the registration minimum does not touch is the thing lawsuits are made of: other people's bodies.
The judgment-proof argument, stated fairly
I am not going to pretend the argument is stupid, because it isn't — Florida is one of the friendliest states in the country to a defendant with nothing.
The homestead is constitutionally protected. A head of family — anyone providing more than half the support for a child or other dependent — whose disposable earnings are $750 a week or less is fully exempt from wage garnishment, and earnings above that generally cannot be garnished without a written waiver signed separately from anything else [9]. If you are not head of family, federal law still caps garnishment at 25% of disposable earnings or the amount above 30 times the federal minimum wage, whichever is less [12]. Qualified retirement accounts and IRAs are exempt from creditor claims [13], and so are annuity proceeds and the cash value of life insurance [14].
So yes: a renter with no savings, head-of-family wages under the exemption, and a twelve-year-old car genuinely presents a plaintiff's attorney with a thin file. Attorneys work on contingency; they read asset pictures before they invest in a case; some suits against genuinely empty defendants never get filed. If that is you — actually you, on paper, today — then minimum limits are not recklessness. They are triage, and an honest agent should say so instead of upselling you with a hypothetical.
Here is the problem. Almost nobody stays that person for twenty years. And the state has two levers that never once ask what you own.
What they can actually reach when you "own nothing"
Lever one: your license, before any lawsuit exists. Cause a crash involving injury while carrying no bodily injury coverage, and the department can suspend your license and registration 30 days after the crash report — unless you deposit security with the state to cover the claimed damages or produce signed releases from every injured party [5]. No courtroom, no judgment, no attorney deciding whether you're worth suing. The suspension machinery runs on the crash report.
Lever two: your license, for as long as the judgment lives. If a lawsuit does come and a judgment is entered and goes unpaid, the suspension becomes indefinite: license and registration suspended until the judgment is satisfied, or until the judgment creditor consents in writing to installment payments — consent they can condition, and that leaves you maintaining proof of financial responsibility for three years besides [6]. The person you injured becomes, functionally, the co-signer on your driving privilege.
Lever three: time. A Florida judgment is enforceable for 20 years from the date it is entered [7], and it grows the whole time — the current statutory rate is 8.25% a year, reset quarterly by the CFO [8]. A $60,000 excess verdict against a 26-year-old with nothing is not a $60,000 problem. It is a lien waiting on the next twenty years of that driver's life: the pay raise that pushes wages past the exemption, the non-exempt bank account, the inheritance, the small business, the co-owned property. Judgment creditors can renew their position and wait. You are not judgment-proof. You are judgment-proof today — and the judgment is patient.
Two more facts belong in this section because they surface in every real case. Bankruptcy can discharge an ordinary negligence judgment — that is a genuine escape hatch, and fairness requires mentioning it — but it does not discharge a judgment for death or personal injury you caused driving while intoxicated, and willful or malicious injury doesn't discharge either [11]. And the $10,000 property damage minimum has its own quiet gap: a single newer truck or SUV can carry a repair-or-replace bill several times that limit, so even a routine two-car crash can produce personal property-damage exposure with no lawsuit sophistication required at all.
What buying up actually costs, and what it actually buys
Liability pricing has a shape most buyers never see: the first dollars of coverage are the most expensive, and the curve flattens as limits rise — the carrier's cost of the rare big claim is far smaller than its cost of the frequent small one. On the auto policies I quote in Northeast Florida, the step from minimum bodily injury limits to 25/50, or from 25/50 to 100/300, is consistently the cheapest meaningful upgrade on the quote — the kind of line-item change people are surprised by in a good way.
And what it buys is not only the limit. Two things ride along:
A funded defense. A liability policy obligates the carrier to defend you — investigators, adjusters, defense counsel — and for a driver with no assets, the defense is arguably worth more than the limit, because the alternative is answering a lawsuit alone. One mechanism works specifically against minimum limits: when the injury clearly exceeds a $10,000 limit, the carrier's cleanest move is often to tender that limit early. The check ends the carrier's practical involvement, and the remaining exposure — the part above $10,000 — is yours to face without them. A higher limit keeps the carrier, and its lawyers, standing next to you longer.
Distance from the levers. Limits that actually absorb the claim are what keep the judgment from existing — which means no unsatisfied-judgment suspension, no 20-year lien, no creditor holding your license [6] [7]. The coverage isn't protecting your assets. It is protecting your mobility and your next two decades of income from a machine that runs whether or not you own anything.
The drivers who ask me the judgment-proof question are usually right about their balance sheet and wrong about their timeline. The judgment doesn't care what the balance sheet says this year — it waits, at statutory interest, for the version of you that finally has something.
— Ricardo Alonso, Founder, Atesa Risk Advisors
Who can actually justify minimum limits
Run yourself against the whole list, not the first line:
- You rent, and expect to keep renting.
- No savings or investment accounts outside protected retirement plans [13].
- Head-of-family disposable earnings at or under $750 a week — the full exemption [9] — with no raise on the horizon that changes it.
- No professional license, CDL, or job where a suspended driver's license ends the paycheck.
- No realistic inheritance, no co-owned property, no business equity coming.
- You could absorb losing your own car and paying your own medical bills past PIP's 80% [2].
If every line is true, minimum limits are a rational bet, and I will write that policy without a lecture. What I ask those clients to do is put a date on it — because the list stops being true quietly. A better job, a marriage, a first house: each one converts the judgment-proof argument from a strategy into an exposure, and nobody sends you a notice when it happens.
Your five-step limits decision
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| Price the actual spread | Get the same policy quoted at minimums, 25/50, 50/100, and 100/300 — decide on real numbers, not assumptions about what "more" costs |
| Run the exemption test honestly | Head-of-family status and the $750/week line decide what a creditor can reach today [9]; if you clear it, the judgment-proof case is weaker than you think |
| Weigh your license against your paycheck | If you cannot earn without driving, price the suspension levers [5] [6], not just the lawsuit |
| Check the property side too | $10,000 in property damage against what people actually drive; a limits mismatch there needs no injury at all [3] |
| Put a review date on the decision | Minimum limits chosen rationally at 25 can be quietly irrational at 30 — recheck at every raise, move, marriage, or purchase |
FAQ for Florida Drivers
Q: Is 10/20/10 insurance required in Florida?
A: Not to register a car. Florida registration requires $10,000 of PIP and $10,000 of property damage liability only. The 10/20/10 figure is the state's proof-of-financial-responsibility standard, demanded after a crash or qualifying violation — and it becomes 100/300/50 for three years after a DUI conviction.
Q: What can someone actually sue me for if I don't own anything?
A: They can still sue, win, and record the judgment. Florida's exemptions may keep them from collecting today — but the judgment is enforceable for 20 years with interest (8.25% a year as of Q2 2026), and an unpaid crash judgment suspends your license and registration until it is resolved. The practical loss is usually mobility and future income, not present assets.
Q: Can my wages be garnished after a car accident judgment in Florida?
A: If you qualify as head of family — providing more than half the support of a child or dependent — disposable earnings of $750 a week or less are fully exempt, and amounts above that generally require your prior written agreement to garnish. Non-heads-of-family fall under the federal cap: the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount above 30 times the federal minimum wage.
Q: How long does a judgment last in Florida?
A: It is enforceable for 20 years from the date of entry, and it accrues interest at the statutory rate the CFO resets quarterly. Creditors can pursue newly acquired, non-exempt assets and income at any point in that window.
Q: Does bankruptcy wipe out a car accident judgment?
A: An ordinary negligence judgment can be discharged in bankruptcy. A judgment for death or personal injury caused by driving while intoxicated cannot, and neither can debts for willful and malicious injury.
Q: What insurance do I need after a DUI in Florida?
A: Proof of 100/300/50 — $100,000 per person and $300,000 per crash in bodily injury liability plus $50,000 in property damage — maintained for a minimum of three years.
Q: Is minimum coverage ever the right choice?
A: For a genuinely asset-free, judgment-remote driver — renter, protected wages, no license-dependent job, no assets coming — it can be a rational budget decision. The mistake is not making that choice; it is never revisiting it as income and assets grow.
Related Reading
- No, Florida PIP Did Not Get Repealed — what the $10,000 no-fault benefit actually pays and the repeal rumor that will not die.
- Florida PIP and Bodily Injury: How the Two Coverages Split the Bill — the coverage mechanics underneath every limit decision.
- Florida Personal Umbrella Insurance in 2026 — the next question after limits: when $1 million of extra liability costs less than you think.
- High-Net-Worth Auto Insurance in Florida — the opposite end of this article: what changes when there is plenty to take.
How Atesa Risk Advisors Can Help
We quote the spread instead of arguing about it. Bring us your current policy and we will price the same coverage at minimums, 25/50, 50/100, and 100/300 across more than 40 A-rated carriers, show you the actual dollar difference per month, and walk the exemption test with you honestly — including telling you when minimum limits are a defensible call for your situation. If your balance sheet has outgrown the judgment-proof argument, we will show you where the line moved. And this article is general education, not legal advice — exemption and asset-protection law is technical, so put a Florida attorney on that side of the question and put us on the insurance side.
Want the real price of not being judgment-proof-today? Get your free quote and consultation at atesariskadvisors.com/get-quote or call (904) 900-5063.
Sources
[1] The 2025 Florida Statutes — Section 320.02, Registration required; proof of insurance
[2] The 2025 Florida Statutes — Section 627.736, Required personal injury protection benefits
[3] The 2025 Florida Statutes — Section 324.022, Financial responsibility for property damage
[4] The 2025 Florida Statutes — Section 324.021, Definitions; proof of financial responsibility
[7] The 2025 Florida Statutes — Section 55.081, Statute of limitations; lien of judgment
[9] The 2025 Florida Statutes — Section 222.11, Exemption of wages from garnishment
[11] 11 U.S.C. § 523 — Exceptions to discharge (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
[12] 15 U.S.C. § 1673 — Restriction on garnishment (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
Educational disclaimer: This article is general educational information about insurance and is not insurance advice, legal advice, a quote, or an offer of coverage. Exemption, garnishment, and judgment-collection law is technical and fact-specific — consult a licensed Florida attorney about asset protection. Rates, statutes, and requirements change; confirm current figures with primary sources and a licensed agent before relying on them. Coverage is subject to the terms of your policy. For a personalized review, contact Atesa Risk Advisors, an independent, RamseyTrusted brokerage licensed in Florida (2-20 General Lines).
Ricardo Alonso is the Founder of Atesa Risk Advisors, a Florida independent insurance agency based in Jacksonville. Licensed 2-20 General Lines Agent and 2-15 Health & Life Agent, with a Master of Liberal Arts in Finance from Harvard University. He quotes auto liability limits across the full spread — minimums to umbrella — for drivers across Northeast Florida, and tells them honestly which end of it they belong on.