Post-judgment interest in New York, Florida and federal court

Fixed or indexed

A fixed rate is a number written into the statute. An indexed rate follows a published market rate. New York uses the first and Florida the second, and that difference decides whether the rate you start with is the rate you keep.

A New York money judgment earns interest from the day it is entered, at 9 percent a year unless another statute says otherwise. CPLR 5003¹ starts the clock and CPLR 5004(a)² names the number. There is a second number for one kind of case. In an action arising out of a consumer debt with a natural person as defendant, the rate is 2 percent, with CPLR 5004(b) defining a consumer debt as a natural person's obligation from a transaction mainly for personal, family or household purposes. That 2 percent rate reaches judgments entered on or after the amendment took effect, and from entry it reaches the unpaid part of earlier ones.

That 2021 act, which added the 2 percent rate, was signed on December 31, 2021 as chapter 831. By its own terms it took effect on the one hundred twentieth day after it became law. Its effective day is named by counting, not by date. Before the clock even starts, CPLR 5002³ runs interest on the whole award from verdict to entry, and the clerk computes that figure into the judgment, so the number entered already carries interest inside it.

Florida does not write its rate down. Each quarter the Chief Financial Officer sets it by averaging the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discount rate over the preceding 12 months and adding 400 basis points, under Fla. Stat. 55.03(1)⁴. But the quarterly setting is not the same as a quarterly change to a judgment. A judgment's rate is fixed when the judgment is obtained and then adjusted only once a year. It is adjusted each January 1 to the rate then in effect, and it accrues that way until the judgment is paid. Fla. Stat. 55.03(3) draws that line and excepts certain clerk-entered judgments from the annual adjustment. A rate set by written contract is left alone under Fla. Stat. 55.03(1).

Two things this page will not tell you. Florida's rate in force for any given quarter is a number the agency publishes, and it is not stated here. And whether interest compounds under either the New York or the Florida statute is a question neither statute answers, so neither does this page. Simple or compound changes a five-year balance by a lot, and these two statutes do not settle it.

The federal rate

A judgment from a federal district court follows its own rule, and that rule says the one thing the state statutes leave open.

Interest is allowed on any money judgment in a civil case recovered in a federal district court. 28 U.S.C. 1961(a)⁵ allows it and ties the rate to the market: the weekly average 1-year constant maturity Treasury yield the Federal Reserve Board published for the calendar week before the judgment date. So the rate is set by the week you got the judgment, and it does not move with the market afterward.

Compounding, which the state statutes leave open, the federal one answers. Under 28 U.S.C. 1961(b), interest is computed daily to the date of payment and compounded annually, with two listed exceptions. Notice of the rate and its changes goes to every federal judge from the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. One case is carved out entirely: 28 U.S.C. 1961(c)(1) says the section does not apply to an internal revenue tax case.

No weekly Treasury figure appears in these pages. It changes every week, and the statute points you at the published source rather than fixing a number, so look the week up for the week the judgment was entered.

Interest and the face of a lien

A number recorded on a lien is the face. The balance is what is actually owed on a given day. Interest is why the two drift apart, and the states disagree about how much of the drift the record is required to carry.

Florida puts the rate on the paper. A money judgment, an order for judicial sale, and a writ to a sheriff for execution must bear the rate of interest on the face, under Fla. Stat. 55.03(2). For a judgment, writ or process entered after the act's effective date, a sheriff is not required to docket, index or collect on one that omits the rate, though a reference to the statutory rate counts. New York puts the rate on the execution instead: CPLR 5230(a)⁶ requires an execution to state the judgment amount and the applicable interest rate. And if that rate changes under CPLR 5004 while an execution is ongoing, the creditor issues an amended execution, within sixty days of the 2021 amendment's effective date, under CPLR 5230(a), and an amended restraining notice under CPLR 5222(c)⁷, the latter without leave of court. A docket entry itself, under CPLR 5018(c)⁸, gives the sum recovered in figures and the dates and times the judgment-roll was filed and the judgment docketed, which is the face and not the running balance.

Several other states ask the lien filing to carry the rate. Ohio's certificate of judgment states the rate, if the judgment provides for interest, and the date interest accrues from, under Ohio Rev. Code 2329.02⁹. Kentucky's notice of judgment lien states the interest rate under KRS 426.720¹⁰. Oklahoma's judgment index entry gives the amount including interest if the Statement of Judgment showed it, under 12 O.S. 706¹¹. Read enough of these and a pattern shows: the record is built to name the rate, not to track the sum, because the sum changes every day and the rate does not.

What the lien is said to secure is worded differently from state to state, and the wording is worth reading. Connecticut's lien secures the unpaid amount of the judgment, including interest and costs, under Conn. Gen. Stat. 52-380a¹². Maryland's is a lien to the amount of the judgment under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. 11-402. Minnesota's is a lien in the amount unpaid under Minn. Stat. 548.09¹³. One speaks of what is owed today and another of what was entered, which is the same gap between balance and face that the face is what gets counted walks through at length.

Florida offers a way to take the lien off the land without paying it. Under Fla. Stat. 55.10(5)¹⁴, a judgment lien on real property may be moved to a cash deposit or a surety bond equal to the amount demanded in the claim of lien plus interest at the legal rate for 3 years plus $500 for court costs. Three years of interest is written into that formula, which is as close as these statutes come to naming out loud the gap between a lien's face and its balance.

What this does not cover

Three forums for the rate itself, and a short list of states for the lien filing. That is the whole map.

New York, Florida and the federal courts set the rates named here, and the current numbers for Florida and for the federal week are not on this page. States named above for lien filings are named only for what their filings must say, not for their rates. No other state's rate is here, and a rate that holds in one forum does not carry to the next.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. What a judgment is worth today, and whether the interest on it has compounded, are questions for counsel with the file and the right week's number in front of them. What a page can do is narrower. It can name which rate a given forum uses, on what date that rate is fixed, and whether it ever moves.