Clerk of the Court - J.K. "Jess" Irby, Esq. (2024)

​​The Florida Supreme Court has authorized Clerks of Court to accept documents electronically filed through the Florida ePortal. Clerks are not authorized to accept documents for filing by e-mail.

At this time the ePortal can only be used by attorneys admitted to practice in Florida. It cannot be used by non-attorneys or attorneys admitted in other states. The Florida ePortal, governed by the Florida eFiling Authority Board, provides eFiling capability to filers with a single statewide login. The Florida eFiling Authority web page provides training videos and other documentation and information on eFiling.

Click here to visit the ePortal website.

The Alachua County Clerk's Office accepts electronic filings on new and existing cases for all Civil case types: Circuit Civil, County Civil, Domestic Relations, Probate, and Dependency.

To e-File in Alachua County on the ePortal, under "Filing Options" always select: Existing or New Case for Trial Court filings. If you select the Simple E-File option, Alachua County will not appear.

To register for an ePortal account, click on the ‘ePortal’ link. For assistance with creating an account or with password resets, contact the FCCC Services Group at 1-850-577-4609 or email support@myflcourtaccess.com. When registering, be sure your first and last name match the records with the Florida Bar. You can verify your name and email address on file with the Florida Bar on the Florida Bar Website at http://www.floridabar.org/names.nsf/MESearchDK?OpenForm

For training, there are two ePortal videos that demonstrate how to eFile a new case and how to eFile in an existing case:

• Video Demonstration for Filing a New Case
• Video Demonstration for Filing in an Existing Case

Retain original documents at your office unless it is a document type that must also be filed in paper form. The Alachua County Clerk of Court has been authorized to eliminate follow-up paper filings, so there is no need to file follow-up paper copies unless the rule of procedure governing your proceeding requires a paper original to be filed.

Only these documents need to also be filed in PAPER form:

• Last Will and Testament (Death certificates do NOT need to be paper-filed).
• Documents ordered by the Court; and
• Any other documents required by law or rule to be filed in paper format.

If an original note and mortgage is e-filed it will be docketed as a copy.

IF YOU FILE A DOCUMENT IN PAPER FORM THAT IS NOT REQUIRED TO BE MAINTAINED BY THE CLERK’S OFFICE IN PAPER FORM, IT WILL BE STORED TEMPORARILY, THEN DISCARDED. IF YOU WISH TO HAVE SUCH DOCUMENTS RETURNED, YOU MAY PROVIDE A STAMPED, ADDRESSED ENVELOPE AND THE DOCUMENT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU.

Payment through the Florida ePortal for statutory filing fees or costs includes an additional credit card or bank transaction fee. These are convenience fees established statewide to offset the use of electronic funds transfers, whether using a credit, charge or debit card, or an ACH transaction. The ePortal accepts MasterCard, Discover, and American Express cards at a rate of 3 percent. VISA is not accepted. The fee for an ACH transaction is a $3.00 flat fee. You can save your payment information in the ePortal for future use.

Reopen fees are not automatically assessed in the ePortal, though that feature is expected to be added shortly. All motions filed will be reviewed by the clerk to determine if a reopen fee is applicable. If the clerk determines a reopen fee is due, the attorney will be notified.

If a fee waiver is requested and it is not approved, the Clerk’s Office will contact you to arrange for payment of the outstanding fees.

State Agencies exempt from fee payment can utilize the ‘fee waiver’ process at the payment screen. Enter “State Agency – Exempt” in the fee waiver reason box and upload an explanation on your agency letterhead of why you are exempt from payment. The Clerk will review your request and adjust the fees as needed.

Fee payments are processed when the filing is accepted. If your filing has a fee attached, the payment is not processed until the filing is accepted. The payment will not be processed while the filing is in the pending queue and there is no charge if the filing is moved to Judicial Review. Filings that contain documents that cannot be processed are placed in the pending queue and the filer is notified by email of the problem that needs to be corrected. Common reasons for placing documents in the pending queue include: all or part of the document is corrupted, the document appears to have been filed in the wrong county, the case style and case number on the document do not match, etc. If the error is not corrected in 5 days, the filing is moved to the Judicial Review queue.

To e-file in an existing case, select Existing from the drop down menu on the ePortal. Then select Trial Court, Alachua County, and the Court Type (i.e. Probate). Then enter the case number using the fields provided. If you are not certain how to input the case number, see the next section. Then click the SEARCH button. When your case comes up, click the NEXT button. At the party screen select your party and click the NEXT button on that screen. On the document screen, click ADD a document. Then select a case group and document type. Browse your computer for the correct document and click open when you find your document. You may continue to add documents by clicking on the ADD button. Follow the remaining prompts to finish e-filing your document.

Case number entry on existing case filings: The case number on an Alachua County case will look something like 01-2011-CA-4321. The 01 is the code for Alachua County and is not used on the Portal, because it includes that in your case number automatically, since you have already selected Alachua County for your efiling. The Portal defaults to the current year, change the year to the correct 4-digit year. You will already have selected the Division and for most divisions, that determines the Court Type. If the division you are filing has more than one case type, such as Probate, you will need to select the court type by clicking the one of the options in the COURT TYPE box. This will place the correct Court Type code in the box. The remaining numbers go in the SEQUENCE # box, which in the above example would be 4321. This is the sequential number of your case.

*Domestic Violence cases are treated as confidential the case number search will “not find” DV case numbers to protect the confidentiality of the cases. Filing of new Domestic Violence case types is not supported at this time.

**Dependency cases are confidential and the Portal will “not find” DP case numbers to protect the confidentiality of the cases. If you get an error message because the case number is not found, confirm your case number and click OK on the error message.

Case number error messages are a system error with the ePortal. If you get a case number error message when filing an existing case, and you know the case number is correct, click the OK button and look on the parties page to see if those are your parties. If they are continue with your eFiling.

However, if the case is deemed “confidential” by the system, the case information will not be displayed. You can still add documents to the case and submit the documents for filing.

Parties in existing cases cannot be added directly to the Clerk’s case maintenance system from the ePortal. When an eFiled document contains added parties, the Clerk’s office will add the party, if appropriate. When reviewing for parties, be sure to scroll down through all of the parties to be sure the party you are looking for is not there.

Document descriptions might not exactly match the title of your document. If you can’t find your document on the list of available document types, please select the document type closest to the descriptions available. Each document group should have an OTHER group category and an OTHER document type. You can select this for any document not listed. The document will be added to the clerk’s case maintenance system as it is titled. If you believe that what you have is a frequently filed document type that needs to be added to this group type, please notify our office.

Cover letters are not needed. The first page of the filing should be the first page of the lead document (i.e. the Petition/Pleading/Paper) that you are filing. The electronic date stamp is placed on the first page of the pleading efiled, so if a cover letter is submitted as the first page then the date stamp will not be on the actual pleading document. If you do need to file a cover letter, please file this as a separate document.

Civil/Family cover sheets are required. The ePortal process requires information similar to that on a cover sheet to be entered, but does not create a cover sheet for filing and does not transmit the cover sheet information to the Clerk’s Office. If a cover sheet is not filed, our office will still accept the filing, but Fla. R. Civ. Proc. 1. 100(c)(3) provides that if the cover sheet is not filed all proceedings in the action shall be abated until a properly executed cover sheet is completed and filed.

New Cases: to e-file a new case, select New from the drop down menu on the ePortal. Then select Trial Court, Alachua County, and the Division (i.e. Domestic Relations/Family). Select the Case type and Sub-Case type. The remaining information relates to the required coversheet and the notice of related cases. You must fill out that information before you can add parties. Click NEXT to go to the parties screen and add the parties and click NEXT. On the document screen locate the document closest to the document you are filing. Type in the number of pages of your document and then browse your system to find your PDF, Word or Word Perfect document and click open on the document. Click Save. You can continue to add documents. Each document must be scanned or attached separately. Any combined documents will be docketed as one document if they are efiled as one document.

Adding Parties in New Cases: To add a party in a new case, go to the party screen, select the “role” of your client, i.e. petitioner in domestic relations cases or plaintiff in civil cases. For your client, you must check both the boxes marked Primary Party and Filed On Behalf of. Put your client’s first and last name in the Person Name section. If your client is a company, then use the Organization name box, instead. All of the contact information is for your client and is optional. In estates, when entering the decedent as a party, you will need to include the date of death. The Copy from Current Filer information will put YOUR (the attorney’s) contact information in here, which is already on file with the ePortal. You will need to add at least one opposing party, a respondent or a defendant, depending on the case type.

E-service is not available on the ePortal. Filers will need to do their own e-service as required in Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.516 Service of Pleadings and Documents. The ePortal is expected to provide eService in the future.

Status email updates: Each time the status of your eFiling changes the ePortal sends an email. This status can also be viewed on the “My Filings” screen on the ePortal. One of the following status types will assigned to your filing as it progresses through the system:

• Received – The case was successfully received by the ePortal system
• Validating Filing – The case is being validated for acceptance into the Duval County Clerk of the Courts system
• Pending Filing – The case is awaiting a clerk to review the case and docket it into the system.
• Filed – The case has been approved and filed. It is now viewable via the Showcase system.
• Pending Queue – The clerk has reviewed the case and identified a problem with the submission. There will be a comment added to the case that will explain what needs to be fixed in order for the submission to be accepted.
• Filed for Judicial Review – The case was held in the Pending Queue for 5 days with no correction. The eFiling will now need to be resubmitted by eFile or hard copy.

The Pending Queue is for filings that cannot be processed. If your filing was sent to the Pending Queue you have an opportunity to correct the filing by accessing it on your “My Trial Court Filings” on the ePortal and clicking on the ePortal reference number (not the case number). Efilings are sent to the Pending Queue when documents or partial documents are corrupted or efiled in the wrong county; multiple documents are filed as a single document, or there is some other reason our office is unable to process the filing. Regardless of the reason, you will need to correct the filing within 5 days of receiving notice that the case was moved to the Pending Queue. After that time, the filing will be irretrievably moved to the Judicial Review Queue, which means that no further action can be taken with that filing.

To correct a filing in the Pending Queue you need to EDIT or REMOVE/ADD the revised document by following these steps:

1. From the “My Trial Court Filings” screen, click on the underlined Filing # associated with the filing that has been set to PENDING QUEUE status. The filing will re-open in the case information screen.
2. Select the “Documents” tab to go directly to the document edit screen.
3. The following actions can now be performed:
   1. ADD a new document to the filing
      • If you add a new document to the filing the new document will receive a new time stamp.
   2. DELETE/ADD a document to the filing
      • If you delete a document and replace it with another, the new document will receive a new time stamp
   3. EDIT a document on the filing
      • If you replace a document by using the EDIT function, the document will keep the same time stamp. This is the only way to keep the original timestamp on the document.

Note that any edits made on an eFiling that is sent to the PENDING QUEUE status will NOT change the original SUBMISSION DATE of the entire filing but may change the time stamp on an individual document. When the document is docketed on the Clerk’s case maintenance system, the docketing date will be the date the Clerk’s Office accepted the document for processing. That date may not be the same as the ePortal filing date. However, for purposes of computing filing deadlines, the ePortal time stamp rather than the docketing date will control. The ePortal time stamp will be visible on the document image.

Filings cannot be changed, once a filing is submitted to the ePortal. It can only be changed if it was sent to the PENDING QUEUE. If your document has not yet been set to FILED status, you can contact the division you are filing in and request that they send the filing to the PENDING QUEUE. This will allow you to update or replace a pleading document or add/change parties on the filing before it is FILED.

Signatures, per Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.515,on documents that are eFiled are not required to bear the electronic image of the handwritten signature or an encrypted signature of the filer. Instead, the requirement of a signature on an electronically filed document may be met as follows:

s/ or /s or /s/
John Doe
John Doe (e-mail address)
Bar Number 12345
Attorney for (Plaintiff/Defendant) XYZ Company
ABC Law Firm
123 South Street
Orlando, FL 32800
Telephone: (407) 123-4567
email address abc@email.com

See Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.515 Signature of Attorneys and Parties, Page 94

System requirements are: Windows XP or Higher PC or Mac.
Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, and Adobe Acrobat PDF formats are supported.
Internet Explorer 7.0 or above, Firefox 3.0 or above, Safari 3.1.2 or above.
The site does not officially support Chrome or Opera, but both may work. If not, please switch to an approved browser.

Document Formats: The ePortal will accept filings in Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or PDF formats. All scanned documents must be 300 dpi and in black and white. A single filing transaction is limited to 25 megabytes in size. When uploading a document to the ePortal you can check the size by looking at the Size column in your directory. This is an example of where you can find that in Word:

Attachments to a motion, complaint or other filing have to be uploaded with the motion as one document. Under court rules, all filings associated with one pleading or paper are one document. Each document, upon acceptance, will be time stamped and added to the case progress docket.

Redaction: Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.516 requires redaction of certain personal identifying information in all documents, which also applies to eFiled documents.

Notices of Confidential Information must be filed as separate documents, separate from the document that the notice references. Such notices should only be needed if the information must be in the court file in spite of the duty to redact under Fla. R. Jud. Admin. 2.516.

Multiple documents can be filed in the same case in the same transaction. So, a filer may upload several lead documents for the same case number during the efiling process, but the size of the entire transaction cannot exceed 25 MB.

Multiple cases - The ePortal only allows for filing in one case at a time. If a filing applies to more than one case, unless it is officially consolidated by court order with another case, it must be separately filed in each case. If a case is consolidated with others by court order, then a document can be filed in the lead case. The pleading must indicate that it is a consolidated case and include the consolidated case number.

To view your eFiled document, click on the case number in “My Trial Court Filings” or access your account in the Alachua County Clerk’s LINDAS system. There will be a time lag of approximately 72 hours to view the document. Remote, online access to images, per the Florida Supreme Court’s Administrative Order, is limited to attorneys.

Summonses or other clerk-issued documents can be eFiled, however, you will need to get your copy by accessing the filing in the ePortal if filed in an existing case, after it has been issued, docketed and scanned, which is a 48-hour process. If this is a document that needs to be served, you will need to print the issued document and deliver it to the entity serving the process. If the summonses is filed in a new case, it will need to be emailed to you, so please provide an email address for that in a separate cover letter or instruction sheet when filing the summons. Alternately, the document requiring issuance by the Clerk can be mailed in to the appropriate department with the required fees. The Clerk will issue the document if permissible and return to the filer if a postage pre-paid envelope is provided.

Proposed orders and judgments cannot be accepted on the ePortal, but must sent to the judge's office. Attorneys should confer with the judge’s office to determine how the judge prefers to handle proposed orders.

Service requests such as copy work or certified copies can be efiled for some services. These service requests can still be mailed to the appropriate department with the applicable fees. Searches can be conducted on LINDAS and certified copies of Official Records can be purchased at MyFloridaCounty.com. If the ePortal has additional fee options for these services, select the appropriate fee and file an instructions to clerk or cover letter explaining your request.

Duplicate paper filings will not be imaged, since the electronic version of the document is deemed the ORIGINAL and the electronic record is deemed the Official Record of the court file. Duplicates will be discarded, as permitted by rule.

The Florida Bar also has an E-Filing Resources for Florida Lawyers page on its web page.

More information can be found at

• E-Filer Documentation
• Florida Courts E-Filing Authority Board
• Florida Courts eFiling Portal Promo
• Florida State Court's website

For technical support, including password resets, contact the Florida Association of Court Clerks' Services Group at 1-850-577-4609 or email support@myflcourtaccess.com. For assistance with a filing, such as an inquiry regarding a filing or a case, please use the Clerk’s at www.AlachuaClerk.org to contact the appropriate court division.