Insights · Business Divorce · Appeals · September 2, 2026

3 Must-Know Issues About Appealability in Business Divorce

By Pierce Schultz, Esq., and Patrick M. Bailey, Esq.

Typically, appeals must wait until final judgment. In a business divorce, however, orders that decide your client’s fate are often entered before the final judgment. These orders can put someone else in charge of the company, permit a claim for punitive damages, allow the sheriff to seize personal property, impose a lien on real property, or freeze bank accounts. Knowing which of these orders are appealable can be supremely important.

This blog post considers three issues: (1) the appealability of orders appointing or denying appointment of receivers, (2) the value of and the appealability of orders on prejudgment writs of garnishment, attachment, and replevin, and (3) when common law certiorari may be available.

1. Receivership orders are appealable, but custodianship is more complicated.

Florida’s corporate dissolution statutes authorize a court to appoint “one or more receivers to wind up and liquidate, or one or more custodians to manage, the business and affairs of the corporation.” Fla. Stat. § 607.1432. Receivers and custodians, under the statute, are different. The Rules of Appellate Procedure provide that nonfinal orders appointing receivers or denying appointment of receivers are immediately appealable. Fla. R. App. P. 9.130(a)(3)(D). It says nothing about custodians.

The Second District Court of Appeal considered this gap in Razin v. A Milestone, LLC, 67 So. 3d 391 (Fla. 2d DCA 2011). The trial court in that case appointed a “custodian” to retain counsel for the company and to break tie votes between its two managers. One side appealed. Opposing counsel moved to dismiss the appeal, arguing that no receiver had been appointed. The court reasoned that: “Although the trial court labeled the appointment as one of a custodian, the reality is that the appointed person could—and most likely will—exercise the same type of authority and powers which are typically given to receivers.” Id. at 396. The court explained that due to the acrimonious relationship between the two managers, the “custodian” would likely be casting tie-breaking votes so frequently that he would effectively be running the company. Id. Moreover, the appointment was not limited in time, which the court explained was an additional reason the appointment was more in the nature of a receiver. Id.

Razin has two practical implications. First, it establishes that the label – receiver versus custodian – does not control how an appellate court will treat an appointment, the powers granted do. This is consistent with the long-recognized principle that legal filings are to be interpreted by their content, not their titles. Second, because the court in Razin confined itself to “the unusual facts in this case,” a custodian with genuinely limited authority may still fall outside subdivision (D) of the appellate rule, leaving certiorari as the only route to challenge a custodian, which as explained below, is rarely granted because of the high standard of review.

2. Orders on prejudgment writs of garnishment, attachment, and replevin are appealable, but there is nuance.

Business divorce cases are not only dissolution and buyout; they often carry damages claims, such as contract claims, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and conversion. And in an appropriate case, Florida courts may enter writs of garnishment, attachment, and replevin before final judgment and without notice to the other side.¹

These writs, when available, are powerful tools. They can preserve the priority of a claimant’s lien. In re Cooper, 153 B.R. 925, 926 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 1993) (explaining prejudgment writ of garnishment creates an inchoate lien as of the date the writ is served on the garnishee, and a final judgment entered later relates back to that date). And they can completely change the typical dynamic, where the person in control of the assets has huge leverage.

This firm recently watched that play out. Our client wired $400,000 to one of the defendants as part of a joint venture, and the defendant then went completely dark. We had reason to believe the defendant would misuse or misappropriate the funds, and there were several other lawsuits against this defendant alleging similar conduct, so we sought a prejudgment writ of garnishment without notice to the defendant. Only a couple of days after filing suit, the court issued the writ. We served it on the defendant’s bank, freezing most of the funds the client was seeking, all before the defendant even knew that he had been sued.

The case had changed completely. We had secured a fund from which the client could recover, and had the case gone to final judgment, we would have preserved our client’s priority over the claimants in the other cases. The defendant filed an emergency motion to dissolve the writ, but the motion was denied. The case settled, resulting in a recovery of more than $400,000 (it included consideration to settle the client’s claim for attorney’s fees).

Therefore, it is important to ensure that, in deciding motions for prejudgment writs, the trial court gets it right. Orders granting, modifying, or dissolving these writs, or refusing to do so, are appealable nonfinal orders. See Fla. R. App. P. 9.130(a)(3)(C)(ii) (providing that orders determining “the right to immediate possession of property, including but not limited to orders that grant, modify, dissolve, or refuse to grant, modify, or dissolve writs of replevin, garnishment, or attachment” are immediately appealable). In addition, there may also be available writs of mandamus – compelling the trial judge to issue the writ. See Comcoa, Inc. v. Coe, 587 So. 2d 474 (Fla. 3d DCA 1991) (issuing writ of mandamus compelling trial judge to issue prejudgment writ of replevin without notice where judge had set the motion for a noticed hearing); First Union National Bank of Florida v. Knyal, 874 So. 2d 716 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004) (issuing writ of mandamus compelling the circuit court to issue a continuing writ of garnishment it had refused to issue without a hearing).

3. Some nonfinal orders are reviewable through certiorari, filling the gaps left by the rules.

The Rules of Appellate Procedure do not identify every appealable nonfinal order; the common law writ of certiorari helps to fill the gaps. Certiorari is an extraordinary, discretionary writ by which an appellate court reviews a nonfinal order that is not otherwise appealable. The petitioner must show a departure from the essential requirements of the law, resulting in material injury for the remainder of the case, that cannot be corrected on final appeal. Reeves v. Fleetwood Homes of Florida, Inc., 889 So. 2d 812, 822 (Fla. 2004).

Certiorari is most often granted to quash orders compelling production of discovery. Allstate Insurance Co. v. Langston, 655 So. 2d 91 (Fla. 1995). The logic is simple: once the material is produced, the damage cannot be undone. In a business divorce, that usually means disclosure of privileged communications, trade secrets, customer data, or other confidential and proprietary information. Along the same lines, certiorari may be available to review orders compelling production of a company’s books and records. See, e.g., Thinking Systems Corp. v. Wang, 349 So. 3d 948 (Fla. 2d DCA 2022) (quashing order compelling production of corporate documents that amounted to an accounting).

Certiorari may also be available to correct substantive errors in the court’s application of the dissolution or buyout statutes. See Royal United Properties, Inc. v. Royal, 370 So. 3d 1020 (Fla. 6th DCA 2023) (quashing order setting aside corporation’s election to buy out the petitioning shareholder under Fla. Stat. § 607.1436 where order would have prolonged deadlock—harm that could not be undone after final judgment); see also Deltona Transformer Corp. v. Deltran Operations USA, Inc., No. 5D2024-1156, 2026 WL 1837747 (Fla. 5th DCA June 26, 2026) (reversing valuation judgment—reviewed as a nonfinal appeal, not certiorari, although not stating which subdivision of Rule 9.130 applied—because trial court had erroneously held that only the party that had given notice of election to buy out the petitioning shareholder, not the plaintiff, could seek to set aside that election).

What this means at the trial level.

Don’t wait until final judgment to decide whether to appeal. In business divorce cases, there may be several opportunities for appeals of nonfinal orders, some of which can materially change the course of a case. It is vital to consider, for each ruling, whether it is appealable, the mechanism for appeal, the applicable standard of review, and whether the juice is worth the squeeze.