By Miami Senior Advisor Care Team · August 1, 2026
It usually arrives without warning. A letter left on the nightstand, or handed to an adult child at the front desk on a Friday afternoon: the community your mother has lived in for two years is terminating her residency, effective in forty-five days. Nobody sat down with the family first. The letter is two paragraphs long, and the reason it gives is vague — “the facility is no longer able to meet the resident’s care needs.”
Families across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach call us in exactly this position several times a month, and the first thing worth saying is this: forty-five days feels like nothing, but it is enough time to land somewhere better if you use the first week well. Florida gives assisted living residents real procedural rights here, and the notice itself is often less airtight than it looks. Below is what the law actually requires, why these notices get issued, and the sequence we walk families through.
What Florida’s 45-day rule actually says
The relevant law is section 429.28 of the Florida Statutes — the assisted living facility resident bill of rights. It gives every resident of a licensed Florida ALF the right to at least 45 days’ notice of relocation or termination of residency, with only two exceptions, both narrow:
- The resident is certified by a physician, for medical reasons, to require an emergency relocation to a facility providing a more skilled level of care; or
- The resident engages in a pattern of conduct that is harmful or offensive to other residents.
Outside of those two situations, the statute is blunt about what a facility must do if it wants a resident out faster: it has to show good cause in a court of competent jurisdiction. A facility cannot simply shorten the notice because a bill is unpaid, because a family member has been difficult, or because a better-paying private resident is waiting for the room.
Two more protections matter in practice. First, if the resident has been adjudicated mentally incapacitated, the 45 days’ notice of a nonemergency relocation or termination must go to the guardian — a letter left in the resident’s room does not satisfy the law. Second, the reasons for the relocation must be set out in writing and given to the resident or the resident’s legal representative, and the notice must tell the family they may contact the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program and include that program’s statewide toll-free number.
That last requirement is the single most commonly missed element we see. If your letter does not mention the Ombudsman and does not carry the toll-free number, the notice is defective on its face — which is leverage, not a reason to relax.
Why South Florida communities issue discharge notices
Understanding the trigger tells you whether the notice is negotiable. Most fall into one of four buckets.
1. The resident no longer meets continued-residency criteria. Florida sets specific limits on what an assisted living facility may handle, in Rule 59A-36.006 of the Florida Administrative Code. A resident generally may not require 24-hour nursing supervision, and may not be bedridden for more than seven consecutive days — in both cases unless the resident is receiving licensed hospice services. Wound care above a certain stage, and other skilled needs, depend on whether the facility holds a standard, limited nursing services, or extended congregate care license, and whether care is arranged through a licensed home health agency or a nurse under a practitioner’s plan of care. This is why the same decline can be a non-event at one Coral Gables community and a discharge at another two miles away: the license class is different.
2. Behavior the community says it cannot manage. Exit-seeking, nighttime agitation, resistance to personal care, or an incident with another resident. In dementia, these are usually symptoms rather than choices, and they are frequently driven by something treatable — a urinary tract infection, pain, dehydration, a new medication, or the evening agitation many families know as sundowning. A standard assisted living community may simply not be the right setting; a secured memory care environment often is.
3. Payment. Private funds run out, a long-term care insurance claim stalls, or the family expected Medicaid to cover a room-and-board bill that Medicaid does not cover.
4. Business decisions. A building changes hands, converts its license, closes a wing, or reduces the number of subsidized beds it keeps. These notices go to several residents at once, which is a useful tell — if neighbors got the same letter on the same day, the reason has little to do with your parent.
How to read the notice you were handed
Before you make a single phone call, sit down with the letter and check it against this list. Write your answers in the margin.
- Delivery date and recipient. The clock runs from when the written notice was actually delivered to the resident or the legal representative. Photograph the envelope. Note who handed it to whom, and when.
- Is the stated reason specific? “Unable to meet care needs” is a conclusion, not a reason. You are entitled to the reasons in writing. Ask for the specific care need, the date it was assessed, and who assessed it.
- Does it reference the Ombudsman and the toll-free number? Required.
- Does the effective date leave at least 45 days? Count on a calendar, not in your head.
- If there is a guardian, did the guardian receive it?
- Does it match your parent’s file? Pull the current resident health assessment (Form 1823), the service plan, and recent nursing or incident notes. Notices are sometimes issued off a stale assessment or a single bad night.
Then write one email to the administrator — email, so there is a record — requesting, in writing: the specific reason for termination, the assessment it rests on, a copy of the current service plan and 1823, the residency agreement, a ledger of the account, and the refund terms for any deposit or prepaid month. Polite, dated, specific. That single email changes the tone of everything that follows, and if you later need the Ombudsman or an attorney, it is the first document they will want.
Your first week, in order
Day 1 — Call the Long-Term Care Ombudsman: 1-888-831-0404. This is free, confidential, and staffed by advocates whose job is the resident, not the facility. They know the local communities, they know which notices are defective, and a call from an Ombudsman frequently reopens a conversation the administrator considered closed. Call even if you intend to move your parent anyway.
Day 1-2 — Get an independent clinical read. If the notice says the care needs are too high, you need to know whether that is true. Ask your parent’s primary care physician or the treating specialist for a current assessment. Two questions decide most of what follows: does your parent now need skilled nursing, or does a different assisted living setting with the right license class still work? If a hospitalization is what triggered this, the discharge planner is an ally — our guide to moving quickly after a South Florida hospital discharge covers that handoff.
Day 2-3 — Ask whether the gap can be filled where your parent already lives. Depending on the facility’s license and the need, a third-party service sometimes resolves the issue without a move: a licensed home health agency, a private-duty aide for specific hours, a hospice election if your parent is eligible, or a behavioral consult and medication review. Facilities do withdraw notices when the underlying problem goes away. Put the request in writing and ask for a written answer.
Day 3-7 — Start touring anyway. This is the step families skip while they wait for an appeal, and it is the one that costs them. Availability in South Florida moves week to week, and the communities worth having rarely have the right room open on the day you need it. Verify every candidate’s license and inspection record before you fall in love with a lobby — our step-by-step guide to checking a Florida ALF’s license and inspection history shows exactly where to look — and bring a tour checklist so you are comparing the same things at each stop.
One question belongs on every tour now that you have been through this once: “At what point would you issue a 45-day notice to a resident like my mother?” Ask it plainly. A well-run community will answer it plainly, and will tell you its license class in the same breath.
When a facility can move faster than 45 days
The emergency exception is real, and it is not always adversarial. If a physician certifies that your parent needs a more skilled level of care right now — a fall with a fracture, a stroke, a sharp decline — the relocation can happen quickly, and usually should. What you are entitled to is the medical basis in writing, and a transfer to a setting that can genuinely provide the higher level of care, not simply an exit.
The behavioral exception is the one that gets stretched. A single incident is not, on its face, a “pattern of conduct,” and dementia-driven behavior that no one attempted to assess or treat is a weak basis for an emergency removal. If your parent is being told to leave within days over behavior, call the Ombudsman the same day and ask an elder-law attorney whether the notice complies with 429.28. Time matters more here than in any other scenario in this article.
And be alert to pressure that never becomes a formal notice at all: repeated calls asking you to “find somewhere more appropriate,” or a refusal to readmit your parent after a hospital stay. If a community wants a residency to end, Florida requires it to say so in writing, with reasons, and to give the notice the statute requires. A verbal push is not a discharge.
If your parent is on SMMC Medicaid, VA benefits, or long-term care insurance
A discharge is a funding event as well as a housing event, and the two have to be handled in parallel.
If your parent is enrolled in Florida’s Statewide Medicaid Managed Care Long-Term Care program, call the managed-care plan’s case manager the same week. Not every community participates with every plan, so the plan’s network is a hard filter on your search — and the case manager is the person who can authorize services at the next address without a gap. Our guide to SMMC Long-Term Care eligibility explains how the program fits with room and board, which Medicaid does not cover in assisted living.
If your parent receives VA Aid & Attendance, the benefit follows the veteran rather than the building, but the VA needs the new address and, in some cases, updated documentation of care costs. If a long-term care insurance policy is paying, notify the carrier before the move and confirm in writing that the next setting qualifies under the policy’s definitions — a policy that covered assisted living may treat a small adult family care home differently, and finding that out afterward is expensive.
Finally, read the residency agreement’s money terms now, not on move-out day: what happens to the community fee, how the last month is prorated, when the deposit is returned, and whether any notice period runs against your family too. Florida’s benefit programs and consumer resources are collected on our Florida resources hub.
Where South Florida families actually land next
The right next placement depends almost entirely on why the notice was issued. If the trigger was skilled medical need — 24-hour nursing supervision, a resident bedridden beyond what the rules allow, complex wound care — the honest answer is usually a skilled nursing facility, and trying to force another assisted living placement often produces a second discharge notice within months. If the trigger was dementia behavior, a secured memory care community with staff trained for exit-seeking and evening agitation is frequently a better fit than the standard assisted living building your parent is leaving. If the trigger was cost or a business decision, the search widens: a smaller adult family care home, a community in a less expensive submarket, or a return home with in-home care if there is family capacity to support it. Geography is a real lever in South Florida. Rates and availability differ meaningfully between Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach — as do drive times to the hospital system your parent’s doctors use, which matters more than most families expect when the next hospitalization comes. Whatever the trigger, verify each candidate’s license and inspection record yourself, ask directly how the community handles residents whose needs increase, and get the answer in writing. We help families do exactly this at no cost, in English or Spanish, and we can usually shortlist realistic options within a day or two of a notice — which is the difference between choosing a next home and accepting whatever has a bed on day 44. Hablamos español.