Legal Question in Business Law in Florida

Re: Signing non-compete agreement post-employment

The answer to your question is composed of two issues:1) contractual sufficiency of consideration and 2)whether they can fire you for not signing it.

There is no legal requirement to sign this agreement because it is a contract and no person may be forced to enter into a contract. However, if and when you sign the contract, the contract itself requires sufficient consideration to be enforceable (it also has other requirements by law being that it is a restrictive agreement). So, you need receive some consideration for them to have the right to enforce the agreement. On the other hand, they can fire you if you do not sign it because it may be a valid business policy and also because Florida is an at-will employment state. Nonetheless, if they are giving you a non-compete to sign, they obviously do not want to fire you without it - it would be contrary to what they want to achieve by asking you to sign the non-compete. You should negotiate the terms and get some consideration for it.