## Facts

- Henry DeMayo retained Deborah Chames and her firm to seek modification of child support and abatement of alimony.
- DeMayo signed an unsecured, lengthy retainer agreement containing a clause purporting to grant attorney liens on property and to waive the Florida constitutional homestead exemption if a charging lien were obtained.
- Chames withdrew from representation and obtained a charging lien and final judgment for $33,206.76 in unpaid fees.
- The trial court enforced the charging lien against DeMayo’s homestead based on the contractual waiver.
- DeMayo appealed, asserting the homestead waiver was invalid and the lien could not be enforced against the home.

## Issues

1. Whether a homeowner may validly waive the Florida Constitution’s homestead exemption from forced sale in an unsecured retainer agreement, permitting an attorney’s charging lien to attach to homestead property.
2. Whether a constitutional amendment expanding homestead eligibility to “a natural person” made the exemption a freely waivable personal right.
3. Whether Florida should permit unsecured contractual homestead waivers based on other jurisdictions’ treatment or by analogy to waiver of other constitutional rights.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court approved the decision of the Third District Court of Appeal.
- The court held the homestead exemption may not be waived in an unsecured agreement, including an attorney retainer agreement.
- The purported waiver in DeMayo’s fee contract was invalid.
- Because the waiver was invalid, Chames’s charging lien could not be enforced against DeMayo’s homestead.

## Legal Principles

- Florida’s homestead exemption from forced sale under article X, section 4(a)(1) is subject only to the constitution’s limited exceptions.
- Homestead protection may be waived in a mortgage (a secured transaction), but not in an unsecured contract.
- A constitutional amendment expanding the class of persons eligible for homestead protection did not authorize waiver of the exemption in unsecured agreements.
- Florida precedent spanning more than a century bars unsecured contractual waivers of homestead protection, and the court declined to recede from that rule.

## Conclusion

The court held that an attorney cannot reach a client’s homestead by inserting a homestead-waiver clause into an unsecured retainer agreement; absent a constitutionally recognized exception (such as a mortgage), the homestead exemption blocks forced sale to satisfy an attorney’s charging lien.


Chames v. DeMayo, 972 So. 2d 850 (Fla. 2007)