If you are in the middle of a divorce, you already know that legal fees are one of the hardest parts to plan for. You may have been told that the court can order your spouse to help pay your attorney fees if there’s a real gap in your finances. That’s true. But what happens when a judge agrees you need help — and then awards you a fraction of what you actually spent, without explaining why?
That’s exactly what happened in a case the Second District Court of Appeal decided on January 23, 2026, and the outcome is worth understanding whether you’re just starting to look for a Tampa divorce lawyer or you’re already deep into litigation. In Jackowska v. Blessitt, a former wife asked for roughly $73,000 in attorney fees and costs. The trial court found she needed help paying them — and then awarded her about $15,000, with almost no explanation for the difference. The appellate court reversed.
The takeaway isn’t that judges are unfair. It’s that Florida law requires courts to show their work, and that a client who understands this has a meaningful protection most people never learn about. Below, we walk through what happened, what the court decided, and what it means practically for anyone navigating a Hillsborough County divorce.
The Case at a Glance: Jackowska v. Blessitt (2026)
The parties were Joanna Jackowska (referred to by the court as the Former Wife) and Keith Blessitt (the Former Husband). Their marriage was dissolved by a final judgment entered on March 31, 2022, in a Florida trial court. Like many final judgments in Florida divorce cases, this one didn’t resolve everything at once — the court specifically reserved jurisdiction to deal with attorney fee requests later.
That reservation matters, and it’s a detail worth flagging early. In a lot of divorces, the fight over who pays the lawyers is a separate proceeding that happens after the divorce itself is final. The marriage ends; the money question lingers.
Nearly two years later, in February 2024, the Former Wife filed a detailed affidavit from her attorney documenting the work performed and the charges incurred. The total came to $73,763.71. In March 2024, she filed her formal motion asking the court to order her former husband to contribute.
He objected. His position was straightforward: he argued that he wasn’t in a superior financial position and therefore shouldn’t have to contribute anything toward her litigation expenses.
The trial court held an evidentiary hearing, disagreed with him on the threshold question, and found that the Former Wife did have a need for attorney fees and costs. It also found that her attorney’s rate of $300 per hour was reasonable. So far, so good for the Former Wife.
Then things went sideways.
What Actually Happened in the Trial Court
At the end of the hearing, the trial court noted a problem with the fee affidavit: it contained what lawyers call “bulk billing” or “block billing” — time entries that lump several tasks together under a single time charge on a single date. The court said this practice “would result in a significant reduction of requested fees.”
Here’s the critical part. The court didn’t say which entries were the problem. It didn’t say how many hours it was disallowing, or what dollar amount would come off the top. Instead, it sent the parties to mediation and asked them to work out among themselves which items in the 21-page affidavit weren’t compensable, so that a final number could be entered.
Mediation didn’t work. So in October 2024, the trial court issued a supplemental order. In that order, it made three moves that ultimately doomed the ruling on appeal:
- It stated that the Former Wife had “the sole burden of proof” to support her fee request.
- It said it found the Former Husband’s counsel’s arguments credible, and that those arguments justified excluding certain billed entries.
- It awarded $15,265.
What the order did not contain was any finding about how many hours were reasonably expended in the case. There was no math, no line-item accounting, and no explanation for how a request of $73,763.71 became an award of $15,265 — a reduction of roughly eighty percent.
The Former Wife moved for rehearing. The trial court denied it. She appealed.
What Is the “Lodestar,” and Why Does It Matter to Your Divorce?
To understand why the appellate court reversed, you need one piece of vocabulary. Fortunately, it’s simple.
Florida courts calculate attorney fee awards using something called the lodestar method. It comes from a 1985 Florida Supreme Court case, Florida Patient’s Compensation Fund v. Rowe, and it works like basic multiplication:
Reasonable number of hours × reasonable hourly rate = the lodestar figure
That’s it. The judge determines how many hours the lawyer reasonably needed to spend on the case, determines a reasonable hourly rate for a lawyer of that experience in that market, and multiplies them together. From there, the court can adjust the number up or down for certain recognized reasons — but any adjustment has to be explained.
The reason this matters to you as a client is that the lodestar isn’t just an accounting exercise. It’s a disclosure requirement. Under Florida law, trial courts are required to make specific findings supporting their conclusions about the number of hours reasonably expended, the reasonable hourly rate, and the appropriateness of any reduction or enhancement. An experienced Tampa divorce lawyer will tell you that these findings are the single most common reason fee orders get reversed on appeal.
There’s a further wrinkle the Second District has addressed before: even when a court reduces a fee request without going through a formal lodestar calculation, it still has to give a specific explanation for the reduction. You can’t skip the analysis by declining to call it a lodestar analysis.
And when those findings are missing from the written order? Florida appellate courts have a phrase for it — the order is “erroneous on its face.” That means the appellate court doesn’t need to guess at what the judge was thinking or comb the transcript for justification. The absence of the findings is itself the error.
What the Second District Court of Appeal Decided
The Second District — the appellate court that reviews civil and family law decisions from Hillsborough County and much of the Tampa Bay region — reversed and sent the case back.
The court’s reasoning had three parts.
First, the order didn’t contain the required findings. The written order established the reasonable hourly rate and stopped there. It contained no finding about the reasonable number of compensable hours. Because the lodestar requires both halves of the equation, half an analysis isn’t enough.
Second, the trial court got the burden of proof backwards — or at least, incomplete. More on that in the next section, because it’s the part most likely to affect your case directly.
Third, if the reduction was meant as a penalty for litigation misconduct, that required its own set of findings that weren’t made. Again, more below.
The remedy was a reversal and remand: the trial court has to enter a new order that actually contains specific findings supporting whatever award it makes. Importantly, the appellate court did not say the Former Wife was entitled to the full $73,763.71. It said she was entitled to an explanation. On remand, the number could end up higher, lower, or in the same neighborhood — but it has to be justified on the record.
That distinction is worth sitting with, because it captures something true about appellate work generally. Winning an appeal often means winning the right to a properly conducted proceeding, not a guaranteed dollar figure.
Who Has the Burden of Proof in a Florida Attorney Fee Dispute?
This is the section to read twice if you’re currently fighting over fees.
The trial court in Jackowska wrote that the Former Wife had “the sole burden of proof” to support her fee request. The appellate court flatly said that’s incorrect — and explained why the burden is actually split.
The person requesting fees has the initial burden. If you’re asking the court to order your spouse to contribute, you have to establish your entitlement to an award. In a Florida divorce, that typically means demonstrating your need and your spouse’s relative ability to pay, and documenting the work performed and charges incurred, usually through a detailed attorney affidavit and testimony.
But then the burden shifts. Once entitlement is established, “the opponent of the fee has the burden of pointing out with specificity which hours should be deducted.” That’s a direct requirement, and it’s a demanding one. A spouse who wants to knock down a fee request can’t simply gesture at the affidavit and complain that it looks padded or that the entries are grouped together. He or she has to identify particular entries and explain why each one shouldn’t be compensated.
In Jackowska, that didn’t happen. The record showed that the Former Wife had sought compensation for 152.5 hours of her lead attorney’s time at $300 per hour, 9.1 hours of an associate’s time at $250 per hour, and additional specifically identified charges for paralegals, legal assistants, and law clerks. All of it was detailed in the affidavit, which came into evidence without objection. Her attorney testified that the fees were reasonable and necessary, and specifically denied the opposing side’s claim that the Former Wife’s own conduct had driven up the bill.
The Former Husband argued that many entries were grouped together and described multiple tasks on a single date. But he never identified which specific entries should be disallowed, or what they were worth. Under Florida law, that general objection wasn’t enough to carry his half of the burden — and the trial court’s order didn’t fill the gap with findings of its own.
If you take one practical lesson from this case, let it be this: a vague objection is not a valid objection. That principle protects both sides. If your spouse’s lawyer submits a fee affidavit you believe is inflated, a good Florida divorce attorney will go through it line by line rather than making sweeping complaints — because sweeping complaints tend not to survive appellate review.
The Misconduct Question: Can a Judge Reduce Your Fees for “Bad Behavior”?
The Former Husband also argued that the Former Wife had engaged in conduct that unnecessarily increased both parties’ fees, and the trial court agreed, concluding that “there was unnecessary behavior from the wife that caused an increase in fees.”
Florida courts genuinely can reduce a fee award as a consequence of litigation misconduct. Judges have real tools to discourage parties from filing pointless motions, dragging out discovery, or turning a manageable case into a war of attrition. Nobody should read this case as a green light for scorched-earth divorce tactics.
But the tool comes with a requirement attached. A court that reduces fees on this basis must make specific findings supporting the reduction and must explain what portion of the fees were actually caused by the misconduct. In other words, the judge has to connect the behavior to the bill.
That’s the connection the trial court didn’t make here. It found that unnecessary behavior increased fees, but never correlated the alleged misconduct to any particular attorney fees the Former Wife incurred. Without that link, an eighty percent reduction can’t stand — because there’s no way for anyone, including a reviewing court, to tell whether the reduction is proportionate to the conduct or simply a round number.
There’s also a preservation point tucked into a footnote that’s worth knowing. The Former Wife had framed her argument as one of fundamental error, but the appellate court noted she didn’t need to — because she raised the issue in a motion for rehearing, she had properly preserved it for appeal. Under Florida’s family law rules, a motion for rehearing is often the mechanism for telling a trial court that its order is missing required findings. If your attorney spots that problem after an order comes out, that motion is frequently the necessary next step, and there are deadlines attached to it.
Practical Takeaways for Anyone Going Through a Florida Divorce
Case law can feel abstract when you’re the one living through the divorce. Here’s how the principles in Jackowskatranslate into things you can actually do.
Keep your legal billing detailed and specific
The trial court’s initial concern in this case wasn’t invented out of thin air. Block billing — an entry like “6.5 hours: reviewed documents, phone calls, drafted correspondence, prepared for hearing” — makes it genuinely hard for a judge to assess reasonableness. Ask your attorney how their firm records time. Entries that separate tasks with individual time increments are easier to defend if fees ever become contested.
Understand that fee entitlement and fee amount are two separate fights
Winning the argument that your spouse should contribute is step one. Determining how much is step two, and it can be just as contested. Budget your emotional energy accordingly, and don’t assume that a favorable ruling on need means the number will follow automatically.
Read the written order, not just the ruling from the bench
What a judge says at a hearing and what appears in the signed written order are not always the same thing, and appellate courts review the written order. In Jackowska, the fatal problem was what the order failed to say on paper. If your order seems to be missing the reasoning that was discussed in court, tell your lawyer promptly — there are time-limited procedures for raising it.
If you’re opposing a fee request, be specific or expect to lose the point
General complaints about padded bills don’t satisfy the burden Florida law places on the party challenging fees. Specific line-item objections do.
Expect the process to take time
Look at the timeline in this case. The divorce was final in March 2022. The fee affidavit was filed in February 2024. The supplemental order came in October 2024. The appellate decision landed in January 2026 — and it sent the case back to the trial court for further proceedings. Nearly four years after the dissolution, the fee question still wasn’t finished. This is not typical of every case, but it’s a real reminder that post-judgment litigation has its own long clock. A candid conversation with a Tampa divorce lawyer early on about likely timelines and costs is worth more than an optimistic one.
How Fee Awards Fit Into the Bigger Financial Picture
Attorney fees don’t exist in a vacuum. In Florida, the fee analysis is closely tied to the parties’ relative financial circumstances — need and ability to pay — which means it’s connected to everything else being decided in the case.
Marital asset division shapes what each spouse walks away with, and therefore shapes each spouse’s ability to contribute to the other’s legal costs. Alimony determinations affect the same calculation. If a settlement leaves one spouse with substantial liquid assets and the other with an illiquid share of a home, those two people are not similarly situated when the fee question arrives, even if the division looked even on paper.
This is one reason Tampa family law attorneys often think about fees strategically from the beginning of a case rather than treating them as an afterthought. The way property is characterized and divided, the way financial affidavits are prepared, and the way discovery is conducted all feed into the record a judge will eventually look at when deciding who pays for the lawyers. A Hillsborough County divorce that’s handled with an eye toward that eventual analysis is generally in a stronger position than one where fees only come up at the end.
It’s also worth remembering the emotional dimension. Fee litigation tends to arrive when both people are exhausted and want the case to be over. That’s precisely when it’s most tempting to accept a number that isn’t supported by the law, simply to stop. Knowing that Florida requires courts to explain fee reductions gives you a reason to pause and ask whether an order actually complies before you decide to live with it.
Talk to a Tampa Divorce Lawyer at The McKinney Law Group
Divorce is stressful enough without wondering whether the financial rulings in your case were made correctly. If you’re facing a contested divorce, a dispute over attorney fees, or a post-judgment issue in Hillsborough County or anywhere in the Tampa Bay area, you don’t have to sort through cases like Jackowska v. Blessitt on your own.
At The McKinney Law Group, we help clients understand where they stand, what the law actually requires, and what a realistic path forward looks like — in plain language, without pressure. Whether your case is likely to settle quickly or headed for a hearing, having a Tampa divorce lawyer who reads the orders closely and knows what findings Florida law demands can make a real difference in the outcome.
Contact The McKinney Law Group today to schedule a consultation. We’ll listen to what’s going on, answer your questions honestly, and help you figure out your next step.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my spouse be ordered to pay my attorney fees in a Florida divorce?
Possibly. Florida law allows a court to order one spouse to contribute to the other’s attorney fees and costs, and the analysis generally focuses on one spouse’s need and the other’s ability to pay. It is not automatic, and it depends heavily on the financial circumstances in your particular case. A Florida divorce attorney can review your situation and give you a realistic assessment.
What is the lodestar method?
It’s the standard Florida courts use to calculate a reasonable attorney fee: the number of hours reasonably expended multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. The court can then adjust that figure for recognized reasons, but it has to explain any adjustment with specific findings.
Does a judge have to explain why they reduced my fee request?
Yes. Florida trial courts are required to make specific findings supporting their conclusions about reasonable hours, the reasonable hourly rate, and any reduction or enhancement. When a court reduces a requested amount, it must provide a specific explanation. An order missing those findings is considered erroneous on its face and can be reversed on appeal.
What is “block billing” or “bulk billing,” and is it a problem?
Block billing is when several tasks are grouped into a single time entry, like recording five hours for a combination of document review, calls, and drafting. Courts sometimes discount block-billed entries because it’s hard to assess whether each task took a reasonable amount of time. It’s generally better for time to be recorded task by task, particularly in a case where fees may be contested.
If my spouse thinks my legal bills are too high, what do they have to prove?
Under Florida law, once you’ve established your entitlement to a fee award, the party opposing the fees has the burden of pointing out with specificity which hours should be deducted. Generalized complaints that the bills look excessive typically won’t satisfy that burden.
Can a court reduce my fees because of how I behaved during the divorce?
It can, but not casually. If a court is reducing a fee award as a consequence of litigation misconduct, it must make specific findings supporting the reduction and explain what portion of the fees was actually caused by the conduct in question. A general observation that someone made the case harder isn’t sufficient on its own.
What should I do if I think my fee order is missing required findings?
Talk to your attorney right away. In Florida family law cases, a timely motion for rehearing is often the appropriate way to raise a missing-findings problem with the trial court, and it can also preserve the issue for appeal. Deadlines are short, so this is not something to sit on.
Does an appeal mean I’ll get the full amount I asked for?
No. In Jackowska, the appellate court reversed and sent the case back for a new order containing proper findings. It did not order the trial court to award the full request. A successful appeal on this kind of issue generally gets you a properly explained decision, not a guaranteed number.
How long do attorney fee disputes take in Hillsborough County?
It varies widely depending on the complexity of the case, the court’s calendar, and how much the parties are contesting. The case discussed here stretched over several years from final judgment through appeal, though that’s on the longer end. Your Tampa family law attorney can give you a better estimate based on your specific circumstances.
Written by Damien McKinney, Founding Partner
Damien McKinney is the Founding Partner of The McKinney Law Group Family & Divorce Lawyers, bringing nearly two decades of experience to complex marital and family law matters. He is licensed in both Florida and North Carolina and has been repeatedly recognized as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers.