FR-44 insurance vs SR-22

One extra letter. In Florida it multiplies the liability cover your policy must carry by 10; in Virginia the statute simply says “double” and leaves you to do the arithmetic. If your case was a DUI in either state, every SR-22 quote you have collected so far is for the wrong product.

What FR-44 insurance is

FR-44 insurance is not a separate kind of policy. It is an ordinary auto liability policy written at higher limits, with an FR-44 certificate filed by the insurer to tell the state the policy exists. Only two states use it. Florida's statute sets the FR-44 limits for every owner or operator who, “regardless of adjudication of guilt”, has been found guilty of or pleaded guilty or no contest to driving under the influence after October 1, 2007: 100/300/50, “in addition to any other financial responsibility required by law”, carried “for a minimum period of 3 years”. Virginia requires it after the three offenses in sec. 46.2-316(A)(4), at not less than double its ordinary minimum — 100/200/50 today.

The statute lets Florida drivers meet the requirement another way, with a certificate of deposit of at least $350,000, which is why almost everyone buys the policy. In Virginia, the FR-44 is the “Virginia Uniform Financial Responsibility Form”, named in the same sentence of sec. 46.2-439 that names the SR-22. Who needs it, how long it runs and how the amounts compare are below.

Is an FR-44 the same thing as an SR-22?

No. Both are certificates an insurer files with the state to prove you carry liability insurance, but the FR-44 is used only in Florida and Virginia, only after a drunk-driving case, and it certifies far higher limits: 100/300/50 in Florida against an ordinary 10/20/10, and 100/200/50 in Virginia — double its ordinary 50/100/25. An SR-22 at ordinary limits does not satisfy an FR-44 requirement. Everywhere else, and in those two states for every other reason, the filing is an SR-22.

What each form actually certifies

Florida and Virginia both use a second certificate, the FR-44, for drivers whose requirement came out of a driving-under-the-influence case. Everywhere else — and in those two states for every other trigger — the form is an SR-22. The difference is not administrative. It is the size of the policy you are obliged to buy, and it is large enough that quotes collected against the wrong form are not quotes for your problem.

Florida: 10 times the ordinary figure, per person

Florida's ordinary proof of financial responsibility is $10,000 per person / $20,000 per accident / $10,000 property damage. Its FR-44 figure is $100,000 per person / $300,000 per accident / $50,000 property damage. Set those side by side and the FR-44 is 10× the per-person figure, 15× per crash and 5× for property damage.

That multiple is the single most useful number on this page, and it is why an agency quoting you “Florida state minimum” after a DUI has quoted something a tenth the size of what your notice requires. The premium will not be a tenth, but it will not be the same number either.

Virginia: the statute says “double” and never writes a figure

Virginia works differently, and it is worth knowing why the number is hard to find. Va. Code sec. 46.2-316(C) does not contain any dollar amounts at all. It requires a policy meeting sec. 46.2-472 except that the limits shall be “not less than double the minimum limits set forth in sec. 46.2-472” — for each of the three limits separately.

So the Virginia FR-44 figure is arithmetic, not text. Double the current ordinary minimum of $50,000 per person / $100,000 per accident / $25,000 property damage and you get $100,000 per person / $200,000 per accident / $50,000 property damage. This site computes it in the same build that reads sec. 46.2-472, which means that when Virginia next moves the ordinary minimum, the FR-44 figure here moves with it rather than going quietly stale.

Where the form names come from, and why one of them is not in any statute

The names are the confusing part, and there is a single section that explains both of them.

Read that carefully. The SR-22 is an American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators uniform form — an industry association's document that states adopted, not a creature of any one legislature. That is exactly why the name is identical in every state that uses it while the amounts behind it are not: the paper is standardized and the money is not. The FR-44, in the same sentence, is named as a Virginia form.

Florida's chapter never names a form at all

Which raises the obvious question about the other FR-44 state. The answer is that Florida's financial-responsibility chapter does not use either form name. Neither “SR-22” nor “FR-44” appears in the chapter index or in the three operative sections read for this page. Florida legislates the amounts and the duration and leaves the paperwork to the department.

The practical consequence is small but real: a Florida FR-44 question answered with a statute citation is being answered with the amounts, because that is all the statute has. If you want the form itself described, that is a departmental document and not something this site has sourced.

What triggers the higher form

Florida: the disposition, not the conviction

Florida attaches the requirement to anyone who, regardless of adjudication of guilt, has been found guilty of or entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere to driving under the influence after 1 October 2007. A withhold does not avoid it and a no-contest plea does not avoid it, which is why people who believe the case was kept off their record still receive the notice.

Virginia: three named offenses

Virginia is narrower and more explicit. The doubled limits attach only to subdivision (A)(4) of sec. 46.2-316, which lists violations of sec. 18.2-266 (driving under the influence), sec. 18.2-51.4 (maiming while under the influence), sec. 18.2-272 (driving on a forfeited license). Everything else in that subsection — manslaughter with a vehicle, perjury to the Department, a felony involving a vehicle, leaving the scene of an injury crash — gets three years of proof at the ordinary minimum instead.

How long each one runs

Both are three years and neither is measured from the conviction. Florida's exemption is written as a clean-record test running from reinstatement; Virginia's runs from the point you would otherwise be entitled to a license again, which is the end of the suspension rather than the end of the case. People who count from the courtroom finish late in both states. 37 states, nineteen clocks sets the filing periods side by side.

The stale-figure trap sitting inside Virginia's own section

Look at what subsection (A) of sec. 46.2-472 still says. It carries the $30,000 / $60,000 / $20,000 figures that applied to policies effective between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024. Subsection (B) carries the current ones. Both are live text in the same section.

This is the mechanism by which stale figures propagate. A person, a scraper or a model reading that section quickly has a real chance of returning the superseded numbers, because they are right there, correctly formatted, and not marked as expired in any way a machine would notice — they are not expired, they still govern policies written in that window. It is the same failure that put 15/30/5 on a great many California SR-22 pages a year after California moved to 30/60/15.

And it compounds here, because Virginia's FR-44 figure is derived from the ordinary one. Read subsection (A) by mistake and your FR-44 arithmetic is wrong too, by the same margin, in the same direction. The defense is not cleverness; it is tagging every figure with the date it belongs to, which is what the effective date tag beside every citation on this site is for. The limits table carries that column for every state read.

What changes in practice, and what does not

The premium

You are buying $100,000 of bodily-injury cover per person in Florida, or $100,000 in Virginia, from a carrier that has also priced a DUI disposition. Those two facts compound, and they compound in the direction you would expect.

The market

The set of carriers willing to write at FR-44 limits for a driver in this position is smaller than the set willing to write an ordinary filing. Fewer quotes, wider spread between them. That constraint — not the price of any one policy — is what makes this worth shopping at all.

The comparison

Quotes are only comparable if every one of them is at the same limits. Ask for the three numbers in writing. An agency that quotes the ordinary minimum and mentions the filing afterwards has not quoted your product, and the figure will move when it is corrected.

What does not change: who files it

An FR-44 is filed by an insurer with the state, exactly like an SR-22, and cannot be filed by you. The letter on the form changes the amounts, not the mechanism. If the naming is what brought you here, the filing, under all of its names puts every term in one table, and what an SR-22 actually is covers the instrument itself.

Common questions