Florida Restoration Payment: Who Is Responsible for the Invoice

You pay the restoration company. The agreement you sign during a water emergency in Miami-Dade or Broward is between you, the property owner, and the company. Your property insurance policy is a separate agreement between you and your carrier.

We invoice the property owner. You are responsible for payment under your signed agreement, whether or not your insurer pays. Pricing and payment terms are set out in your written agreement.

We provide our photos, moisture readings and invoice to you and, at your request, your insurer. We do not interpret your policy, negotiate with your insurer, or represent you in your claim. Your insurer alone decides what it approves and pays.

One boundary first. Restoration Doctor is a water mitigation company. We are not public adjusters and we are not attorneys, so nothing here is legal or insurance advice. Coverage depends on your policy and your insurer's decision. Questions about coverage belong with your insurer, your agent, or a licensed public adjuster or attorney.

Section 489.147 of the Florida Statutes defines a prohibited advertisement partly by what it must disclose, and the first required disclosure is that the consumer is responsible for payment of any insurance deductible. The same definition requires a second statement. It is insurance fraud, punishable as a felony of the third degree, for a contractor to knowingly or willfully pay, waive, or rebate all or part of an insurance deductible applicable to payment to the contractor for repairs to an insured property. The statute writes an intent element into that, to injure, defraud, or deceive.

That language sits in the roof-claim advertising rules, so read it for what it is: Florida's own description of who owns the deductible, and of the offer that turns a deductible into a fraud problem. What your policy says about your deductible is a question for your insurer or your agent.

Florida attaches duties to money taken at the start, and those duties run in the property owner's favor. Section 489.126 of the Florida Statutes, on moneys received by contractors, applies where an initial payment passes a stated share of the contract price on repair, restoration, improvement or construction to residential real property. Where it applies, the contractor must apply for any necessary permits within 30 days after the date the payment is made, except where the work requires no permit under the applicable codes. It must then start the work within 90 days after all necessary permits are issued, absent just cause or a written agreement to a longer period.

Pricing and payment terms are set out in your written agreement. Read it before you sign and ask for a copy.

Pricing and payment terms are set out in your written agreement. We invoice the property owner, and you are responsible for payment under your signed agreement, whether or not your insurer pays.

If paying will be difficult for you, the useful move is to say so early and in writing rather than going quiet until the invoice is old.

Because waiting costs the building. Wet gypsum, wet framing and wet insulation stay wet until something removes the water, and the longer they stay wet, the more of the structure ends up in a dumpster instead of being dried in place. In South Florida the ambient humidity works against you the whole time. A single-family house in Coral Gables and a unit in a Brickell high rise get there on different schedules, because a tower adds approved vendor lists, certificates of insurance, elevator reservations and restricted work hours before a hose reaches the floor. The clock is the same in both.

That is why the emergency phase is authorized separately from any rebuild. Mitigation is stopping the loss from growing: extraction, controlled demolition of unsalvageable material, containment, antimicrobial application, and air movers and dehumidifiers running until each affected area meets a documented drying goal under the ANSI/IICRC S500.

Reconstruction is a separate phase, done by a licensed general contractor under a separate agreement. If your property needs repairs after drying, we can refer you to licensed contractors.

Your claim runs on a separate track, on your insurer's schedule, and a mortgage servicer or a condominium association can add steps to how money is released. None of it changes what the work cost or who requested it.

Because you hold the agreement, our documentation goes to you. Nothing is held back and nothing is sent anywhere first. We can schedule site access for your insurer's adjuster at your request.

Florida requires part of this in any event. Section 489.147(2)(e) provides that a contractor may not give an insured an agreement authorizing repairs without also providing a good faith estimate of the itemized and detailed cost of services and materials for repairs undertaken pursuant to a property insurance claim. The same paragraph says a contractor does not violate it where the actual cost of repairs differs from the initial estimate as a result of the insurer's process of adjusting the claim.

The set below is project documentation you may share with your insurer.

You are responsible for payment under your signed agreement, whether or not your insurer pays. An agreement does not become smaller because a third party decided to pay less under a different agreement.

Coverage depends on your policy and your insurer's decision. Questions about coverage belong with your insurer, your agent, or a licensed public adjuster or attorney.

Florida draws that line in two statutes, and both are worth knowing before you let anyone tell you they will take the claim off your hands.

Section 626.854 defines a public adjuster as any person who, for money, commission, or any other thing of value, directly or indirectly prepares, completes, or files an insurance claim for an insured or third-party claimant. The definition adds that this holds regardless of how that person describes or presents his or her services, and it excepts a duly licensed attorney at law as exempted under section 626.860.

Section 489.147(2)(d) says it again inside the contractor's own chapter. A contractor may not interpret policy provisions, advise an insured regarding coverages or duties under the insured's property insurance policy, or adjust a property insurance claim on behalf of the insured. The paragraph carries one exception, which is that the contractor holds a license as a public adjuster under part VI of chapter 626.

We do not interpret your policy, negotiate with your insurer, or represent you in your claim. We provide our photos, moisture readings and invoice to you and, at your request, your insurer.

The deductible is where the worst offers in this market live. If a contractor offers to waive it, absorb it, or make it disappear inside the invoice, stop reading the pitch and read the statute quoted above. An invoice engineered to make a deductible vanish is an invoice that no longer describes what the work cost, and the paperwork that reaches your carrier has your name on it.

The rest of the list is less dramatic and more common. None of these is proof of anything by itself, but any of them is a reason to slow down and ask for the answer in writing.

Every statutory point above comes from a page you can open yourself. All three sections were fetched from the Florida Senate's statute site and read on September 21, 2026, and each sentence above claims no more than the text of the section supports.

What this post is not, one last time: it is not a statement about what your policy covers, and it is not legal or insurance advice. Pricing and payment terms are set out in your written agreement.