Coral Gables Attorney

Why Coral Gables Clients Choose Arturo R. Alfonso

What Is Different About Legal Matters in Coral Gables

Buying or renovating a home. Coral Gables runs its own design review. Exterior work such as windows, doors, fences, driveways, paint, and additions generally needs Board of Architects approval before the city’s Building Division reviews the permit, and a local historic landmark or a property in a historic district generally needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before exterior work begins. Before you close, it is worth checking the city’s records for historic designation and for open or expired permits. Our guides to fixing common title defects and as-is purchase contracts explain how problems found late in a deal are handled.

Homestead and bankruptcy. Because Coral Gables is a municipality, Florida’s constitutional homestead exemption protects a Gables home on up to one-half acre of contiguous land (Florida Constitution, Article X, section 4(a)(1)); outside a city the limit is 160 acres. There is no dollar cap on the protected equity, subject to the federal timing rules explained in our guide to keeping your house in bankruptcy.

A Clerk’s courthouse in the Gables. The Miami-Dade Clerk’s Coral Gables District Court is at 3100 Ponce de Leon Boulevard, open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Clerk lists county civil court, small claims, landlord-tenant disputes, domestic violence intake, and marriage licenses among the matters handled there, so a Gables landlord or tenant, or someone seeking protection from a family member, may deal with this location rather than a downtown courthouse. Our guides to the Florida eviction process and getting a domestic violence injunction explain those cases.

Family cases. A Coral Gables divorce, custody, or support case is filed in the Family Division of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, the court that hears family cases for all of Miami-Dade County. Whether you will need to appear in person is covered in our guide to going to court for a divorce.