New consumer laws are coming soon to Florida — and they may affect you

Have you paid too much for a doctor’s bill and spent too much time waiting for a refund?

Are you a pet owner confused by the insurance policy you purchased for your fur baby?

Do you live in a condo and feel uninformed about what the board is doing?

New Florida laws taking effect Jan. 1 will help you get through these and other consumer issues.

Here’s what to know:

Pet insurance will be designated as “property insurance” and face new regulations. (Try telling your pets they are now your property, and not the other way around.)

According to the new law:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is authorized to put on its website the names of people who have been found guilty or have pleaded guilty or no contest to animal cruelty thanks to this new law.

It’s named Dexter’s Law, for a 2024 case in which a man was charged with animal cruelty after he adopted a “sweet tempered” shelter dog from Pinellas County Animal Shelter named Dexter and brutally decapitated the animal days after adoption. The dog’s mutilated body was found in a plastic bag in Fort De Soto Park near St. Petersberg.

The animal cruelty case led to harsher penalties that went into effect on July 1, 2025. The addition, effective Jan. 1, creates the FDLE’s publicly accessible animal abuser registry to prevent future atrocities by tracking offenders.

Pet adoption services or people giving an animal away for adoption are encouraged to search the list to screen potential adopters.

Pay the same bill twice for a medical procedure? It’s easy to do. You paid online, but then a paper bill comes in the mail for the same amount, and you pay it again just to be sure — or you simply forgot this one was paid. Or add an extra digit to your co-pay by mistake?

This new law requires healthcare practitioners, facilities, providers and anyone who accepts payment from insurance for services rendered by healthcare practitioners, to refund any overpayment made by the patient no later than 30 days after determining that the patient made an overpayment.

If they fail to do so, it could be grounds for disciplinary action by the applicable board, or Florida’s Department of Health if there is no board. If the facility or provider is licensed by the Agency for Health Care Administration and fails to timely refund an overpayment, they could face an administrative penalty of up to $500.

The new law’s requirement to timely refund overpayments doesn’t apply to overpayments made to providers by health insurers and health maintenance organizations.

On July 1, a new condo safety law reform went into effect to give condo owners and associations a bit of breathing room without gutting the core of Florida’s new condo safety regulations after the Surfside condo collapse in 2021.

MORE: Will Florida’s new condo law help ease an affordability crisis? See the changes

On Jan. 1, the new law mandates a condo association managing 25 or more units has to follow deadlines for public posting of material related to the safety regulations, including minutes of administrative meetings, videos, affidavits and other materials. These public postings must be accessible not only online but via a mobile device.

The new coverage for diagnostic and supplemental breast examinations law taking effect Jan. 1, means that the state’s health insurance plans for its employees makes exams fully covered and won’t require workers to pay extra costs, such as co-pays or deductibles for diagnostic breast exams or supplemental breast exams.

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