How Long Does It Take to Seal a Record in Florida?

Sealing a criminal record in Florida usually takes five to nine months from the day you start your paperwork to the day agencies finish updating their systems. The single biggest piece of that wait is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which spends roughly three to five months reviewing your Certificate of Eligibility before a court can even look at your petition. Court review adds one to three months on top of that, and agency compliance after the order is signed takes a few more weeks.

Why the FDLE Step Takes the Longest

Before any judge can seal your record, the FDLE has to certify that you qualify under Florida Statute 943.059. That review is the bottleneck. Processing typically runs three to five months, and there is no expedited track.¹

To start the clock, you send the FDLE a completed application, fingerprints taken by a law enforcement or criminal justice agency, a certified copy of the final disposition from the clerk of court where you were arrested, and a $75 nonrefundable fee paid by money order, cashier’s check, or personal check.¹

Any error at this stage costs months, not days. A misspelled name, wrong case number, or missing certified disposition sends the packet back and you rejoin the queue from the back. This is where do-it-yourself petitioners most often lose time.

How Long the Court Phase Takes

Once the Certificate of Eligibility arrives, you file three documents with the clerk of court in the county where the arrest happened: a petition to seal, a sworn affidavit that you meet every eligibility requirement, and a proposed order for the judge to sign.² The original Certificate goes in with the filing. Misdemeanors file in county court, felonies in circuit court.

The clerk forwards a copy to the State Attorney’s Office, which can agree, object, or take no position. When nobody objects, some judges sign the order on the paperwork alone. When the State Attorney objects, or the judge wants more information, the case gets set for a hearing and you wait for a slot on the calendar.

Plan on one to three months for this phase. Uncontested petitions in smaller counties can finish on the shorter end. Contested cases in busy urban circuits sit at the longer end, sometimes past it.

Agency Compliance After the Order Is Signed

A signed order is not the finish line. The clerk sends certified copies to the FDLE, the arresting agency, and every other criminal justice entity that holds your record, and each one then makes its copy confidential.² Give this step several weeks. Your record will not disappear from background checks the day the judge signs.

What Speeds Things Up or Slows Them Down

The five-to-nine-month range assumes a clean file and no fights. Things that push it longer:

Application errors that force the FDLE to reject and return your packet.
A State Attorney objection that forces a hearing.
Heavy court dockets in larger counties.
Petitions that ask the court to include additional related arrests, which need specific language in the order and additional review.

On the faster end, a clean case with a single arrest, an error-free FDLE application, and no prosecutorial objection can finish in about five months. Complex cases with hearings and slow compliance can stretch past a year.

Before You Start the Clock: Make Sure You Qualify

None of these timelines matter if you are not eligible in the first place, and the FDLE will not tell you that for three to five months. Two things are worth checking up front.

First, sealing is the right remedy only if the court withheld adjudication of guilt on your case. If your charges were dismissed, dropped, or you were acquitted, you want expungement under Florida Statute 943.0585, not sealing under 943.059.³ Filing the wrong petition wastes the whole timeline.

Second, you must meet every one of these conditions under Section 943.059:

The court withheld adjudication on the charges tied to the arrest you want sealed.
You have never been adjudicated guilty of any criminal offense in Florida.
You have never had a criminal history record sealed or expunged before in Florida.
You are no longer on probation, community control, or any other court-ordered supervision tied to the arrest.
The offense is not on the excluded list.³

Sealing is limited to one arrest or one incident of alleged criminal activity. A court can include additional arrests in the order only when they directly relate to the original arrest, and the order has to say so specifically.³

Certain offenses can never be sealed regardless of a withhold of adjudication. Section 943.0584 lists them, and Section 943.059 cross-references the list. It includes sexual battery under Chapter 794, lewd conduct involving minors under Section 800.04, voyeurism under Section 810.14, child exploitation under Section 827.071, organized fraud under Section 817.034, drug trafficking under Section 893.135, kidnapping of a child under Section 787.025, abuse of vulnerable adults under Section 825.1025, corruption offenses under Chapter 839, offenses requiring sexual predator or sexual offender registration, and certain violations enumerated in Section 907.041.⁴ Juvenile adjudications for any felony, or for specific misdemeanors including assault, battery, carrying a concealed weapon, arson, exposure of sexual organs, petit theft, child neglect, or cruelty to animals, are also ineligible unless the juvenile record was previously expunged under Section 943.0515.³

Putting the Timeline Together

Add the three phases and the total lands where most sealing petitions land:

FDLE Certificate of Eligibility: three to five months.
Court petition and review: one to three months.
Agency compliance after the signed order: several weeks.

Five to nine months is the realistic window for a clean case. The way you shorten it is not by pushing harder later but by getting the FDLE packet right the first time: correct application, proper fingerprints, certified disposition from the right clerk, and the $75 fee in an accepted form. Everything downstream runs on that one submission.

1
Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Applying for a Certificate of Eligibility for Court-Ordered Sealing or Expungement
2
Office of the State Attorney, 17th Judicial Circuit. Procedures for Filing a Petition to Seal a Criminal History Record
3
Florida Senate. Florida Code 943 – 943.059 Court-Ordered Sealing of Criminal History Records
4
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes Chapter 943 Section 059 – Court-Ordered Sealing of Criminal History Records