Florida Deed Preparation: What It Costs and Who May Prepare One

Florida deed preparation looks like paperwork and is not. You are allowed to prepare your own deed in Florida — nothing stops a person from drafting a deed to their own property, and no statute requires a lawyer to be involved. The question worth asking is not whether you may, but what happens if a detail is wrong, because a defective deed usually does not announce itself. It sits quietly in the county records until someone tries to sell, refinance or settle an estate, and by then the person who could have fixed it may have died.

This page answers the question most people arrive with — do I need a lawyer to add a name to a deed, or to take one off? — and then sets out what Florida requires for a house deed to be valid, what the clerk requires before it can be recorded, what the whole thing costs and how long it takes, the homestead rule that catches more do-it-yourself deeds than any other, and the taxes that arrive uninvited when a mortgaged house changes hands. Every requirement below is tied to the statute, rule or decision that sets it.

And if you would rather hand the deed to your house to a Florida deed attorney, the flat fees are published further down and there is no second invoice: $575 for a quitclaim deed and $675 for a lady bird deed, recording included.

The short answers

Question	Answer	Where it comes from
Do I need a lawyer to add a name to a deed?	No — but the deed that gets it wrong is usually the one nobody reads for ten years	§ 454.18; see who may prepare a deed
Do you need a lawyer to remove a name from a deed?	Also no. The harder question is whether the person coming off is still on the mortgage	See deed vs mortgage
What is the difference between grantor and grantee?	The grantor gives the property; the grantee receives it. Only the grantor signs	§ 689.01(1); § 695.26(1)
Is a deed the same as a title?	No. The deed is the document; the title is the ownership it moves	See deed vs title
Can I sign a Florida deed from another state?	Yes — a Florida online notary in Florida can notarize you anywhere, but the two witnesses are a separate requirement	§§ 117.209(3), 117.265(1); § 689.01(2)
Will a new deed trigger the due-on-sale clause?	Not for the transfers the Garn-St Germain Act protects — but it is a short list	12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d)
How many witnesses does a Florida deed need?	Two, and the grantor must sign in their presence	§ 689.01(1)
Does it have to be notarized?	Not to be valid. Yes, to be recorded	§ 689.01; § 695.03
What does the clerk charge?	$10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each page after, $1.00 for every name past the fourth	§ 28.24(13)
What is the transfer tax?	70 cents per $100 of consideration; 60 cents in Miami-Dade	§ 201.02(1)(a); § 201.0205
If I am married, does my spouse have to sign?	On homestead, yes — even if the spouse is not on the title	Art. X, § 4(c), Fla. Const.
What happens if the spouse does not sign?	The deed is void from the moment it is signed	Mendia v. Galvez (Fla. 3d DCA 2025)
How long does it take?	A day or two to draft; most counties record electronically within one to three business days	County practice; § 695.27
What do we charge?	$575 for a quitclaim deed, $675 for a lady bird deed — including the remote signing and everything the county charges to record it. Transfer tax on consideration is separate and payable by the parties	See what a deed costs

What a Florida deed costs, and what the fee covers

Three separate numbers make up the cost of a deed, and they are paid to three different people. Most of the confusion about what a deed costs comes from mixing them together.

The recording fee, which goes to the county

Recording charges are set by statute, not by the county, so they are the same everywhere in Florida. Section 28.24(13) builds the charge for the first page out of three pieces — a $5.00 recording charge, a $1.00 Public Records Modernization Trust Fund charge, and a $4.00 court technology charge — which is why every clerk in the state quotes $10.00 for the first page. Each later page is $4.00 plus 50 cents plus $4.00, or $8.50. Indexing costs $1.00 for each name past the fourth on the instrument.

So a two-page deed naming a married couple as grantors and two children as grantees — four names — records for $18.50. Add a fifth name and it is $19.50. A certified copy is $2.00 plus $1.00 per page.

The documentary stamp tax, which goes to the state

This is the number that surprises people, and it is the only part of a deed transfer nobody can quote in advance. It is 70 cents for every $100 of consideration, 60 cents in Miami-Dade. Where the deed conveys no present beneficial interest, or the property is unencumbered, the stamp is nominal and it goes with the recording our fee covers. Where a deed presently conveys an interest in mortgaged property, the tax is computed on the outstanding balance and can run into thousands — and that is a liability of the parties under section 201.02(1)(a), not a recording cost. The documentary stamp section below works through when it applies and when it does not.

What a lawyer-prepared deed costs, and what is included

Every deed preparation fee here is flat, published, and covers everything the county charges to put the deed on the public record.

Instrument	Flat fee	Includes
Quitclaim deed	$575	Title review, homestead and joinder analysis, documentary stamp analysis, drafting, the signing — including remote online notarization and remote witnessing if you are signing from another state or country — and the cost of recording, meaning the clerk’s charges under § 28.24 and the nominal stamp an instrument must carry to be accepted
Lady bird deed (enhanced life estate deed)	$675	All of the above, plus drafting the retained powers and the remainder — the part that carries the whole weight
Documentary stamp tax on consideration	Not included in any fee	A tax on the transfer, not a cost of recording. Imposed by § 201.02(1)(a) on the parties who make, sign, issue or accept the instrument. We calculate it and tell you the figure before anything is signed

People ask what a lawyer charges to transfer a deed and get a range rather than a number, which is not much help when you are deciding whether to call. So: $575 and $675, those are the numbers, and they are the numbers whether the property is in Coral Gables or Pensacola.

Those are standard matters: one Florida property, a clean chain of title, straightforward parties. Anything outside that — a title defect, a property that has to go through probate first, a dispute among owners — is different work, and we will tell you so before starting it rather than after.

What the fee covers is the signing and the cost of recording. The signing includes remote online notarization and remote witnessing where the deed is signed at a distance — not billed separately, not a surcharge for being out of state. The recording means the clerk’s charges under section 28.24 — $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each page after, $1.00 for every name past the fourth — together with the nominal documentary stamp an instrument has to carry before the clerk will accept it. You do not get a second invoice for any of that, and you do not need to work out which line is which.

What the fee does not cover is documentary stamp tax assessed on consideration. That is a tax on the transfer rather than a cost of recording, and the two are frequently confused because they are paid at the same counter on the same day. Section 201.02(1)(a) imposes it on the persons who make, sign, issue or accept the instrument — so it is the parties’ liability, and no quoted legal fee should be read as absorbing it. We calculate the figure and tell you before anything is signed, which is the point at which it can still change your mind about the structure.

Whether any such tax arises at all depends on the instrument. Where a deed conveys no present beneficial interest — a properly drafted enhanced life estate deed is the usual example — the Department’s consistent position is that there is no taxable conveyance for a mortgage balance to be measured against, and the only stamp involved is the nominal one that goes with recording. Where a deed does presently convey something and the property is mortgaged, the outstanding balance is generally taxable consideration whether or not the debt is assumed: on a $300,000 balance outside Miami-Dade that is $2,100. The reasoning behind both results, the authorities, and the drafting elements the first one depends on are set out under does a mortgage change that.

The fees above are flat fees for standard matters and are confirmed in writing after we review the current recorded deed. They are not an estimate of taxes, they are not a quote for your matter, and nothing on this page is a representation about the tax treatment of any particular transfer.

Why this is not the $350 you saw advertised

Search for a deed preparation attorney and the first results are rarely lawyers at all. Online deed services and high-volume flat-fee shops advertise roughly $350 and deliver a drafted, notarized, recorded instrument. That is a real service, and for a genuinely simple transfer it is often enough. Two things are worth knowing before comparing the numbers directly.

The first is that the advertised figure is frequently not the figure. Recording is commonly an add-on rather than part of the fee, and remote online notarization is quoted separately at some firms for as much as $250. Ours covers both. The recording is in the fee, the remote signing session is in the fee, and there is no second invoice for either. On a deed signed from out of state, that difference alone can be most of the gap between the advertised $350 and what the transfer actually ends up costing.

Online notary cost is worth pricing separately in your head for the same reason. A standalone notarization is a small charge for a small service — confirming who signed. It is not a substitute for anyone having read the mortgage or the chain of title, and comparing it against a legal fee compares two different things. Where the deed is prepared here, the remote session is inside the flat fee, so there is nothing separate to price.

The second is scope, and it is the more important one. What $350 does not include is anybody reading the chain of title, reading the mortgage, working out whether a spousal joinder is constitutionally required, or telling you that the deed you asked for is the wrong instrument for what you are trying to accomplish. That last one is not a hypothetical: most of the calls we get about a deed that failed are about a deed that was drafted perfectly and was simply the wrong deed.

So what the fee actually buys is the work that happens before the drafting:

• Reading the existing recorded deed and confirming how title is actually held today
• Homestead analysis — whether the property is homestead, whether a spouse must join, and whether the transfer is a devise or a lifetime alienation
• Documentary stamp analysis, including the mortgage question, before anything is signed
• Choosing the instrument, which is a different question from drafting it
• Drafting, the § 695.26 face-of-the-deed requirements, and execution with two witnesses and a notary
• Recording in the right county office, and delivering the recorded instrument back to you

That gap — between drafting a document and deciding which document to draft — is the whole difference between a form vendor and a property deed lawyer. Whether you call it deed preparation or deed drafting, the attorney’s work is the same and most of it happens before a word is typed. It is also why the useful comparison is not $350 against $575. It is $575 against the cost of a deed that has to be undone, which begins at a quiet title action and goes up from there.

If your matter is neither a quitclaim nor a lady bird deed — a warranty deed, a personal representative’s deed, a corrective deed, a deed into a trust — the same analysis applies and we will quote it once we have seen the current recorded deed. Comparing quitclaim deed lawyers on price alone will tell you almost nothing, because the price is not what varies. The scope is.

Need a Florida deed prepared, or a deed you already have reviewed before you sign it? Call (305) 224-6811 or send us the current recorded deed and we will tell you what instrument the transfer needs, what the documentary stamp tax will be, and what it costs. There is no charge for that conversation.

How a Florida deed gets prepared and recorded, step by step

For a straightforward transfer, the whole sequence usually runs a week or less. Most of that is the county’s part, not ours.

1. Send the current recorded deed. Everything starts here. The recorded deed supplies the legal description, tells us how title is presently held, and shows whether anyone has already been added or removed. A property appraiser printout is not a substitute — it is an index, not an instrument.
2. We check title, homestead and the mortgage. This is the step that decides whether the transfer works. Marital status, homestead status and the outstanding loan balance change the answer more often than the type of deed does.
3. We tell you which instrument the transfer actually needs. Sometimes it is the one you asked for. Sometimes a quitclaim deed will do the job and sometimes it will quietly wreck it.
4. We draft it. A day or two for a standard matter. The legal description is copied from the recorded deed rather than retyped from memory, which is where a surprising share of deed errors begin.
5. You sign in front of two witnesses and a notary. In our office, at a mobile notary, or remotely by audio-video technology if you are out of state or out of the country. See signing remotely.
6. We calculate and pay the documentary stamp tax. It is due at recording, and an underpayment carries a penalty that compounds monthly.
7. We record it in the county where the property sits. Electronically in most counties, which is usually one to three business days. Orange County’s office often turns e-recordings around within a day; paper submitted by mail can take a week to ten days.
8. You get the recorded instrument back with the official records book and page. Keep it. That is the document a title company will ask for in ten years.

Sign your Florida deed without leaving home

You do not have to be in Florida to sign a Florida deed. You do not have to be in an office, in the same state as the property, or in the same country. Since 2020 the entire transaction — drafting, witnesses, notarization, recording — has been able to happen without anybody getting in a car.

We handle deeds this way as a matter of course, and for a large share of the people who call, it is the only practical way the deed gets signed at all.

The remote signing is included in the flat fee. $575 for a quitclaim deed, $675 for a lady bird deed, and the remote online notarization and remote witnessing are part of that — not an add-on, and not a surcharge for living somewhere else. Some firms quote the remote session separately at up to $250. There is no separate line for it here.

Who this actually solves a problem for

• Snowbirds and former Florida residents. You own the condo, you spend eight months a year in Michigan or Ohio, and the deed needs to change. Under sections 117.209(3) and 117.265(1), a Florida online notary who is physically in Florida may notarize regardless of where you are. You do not have to be in Florida. There is no requirement that you ever set foot in the state.
• Families spread across states. When two siblings in different states both have to sign, coordinating one video session is easier than coordinating two notaries, two sets of witnesses and a courier.
• Owners and buyers abroad. A deed can be signed from Bogotá, Madrid or anywhere else. For a signer physically outside the United States, section 117.201(6) allows a foreign government passport to serve as the government-issued identification, even without a USCIS stamp.
• Anyone with a mobility or health reason not to travel. The session runs from wherever you are.

How a remote deed signing actually runs

In practice it is one appointment, usually under half an hour.

1. We draft the deed from your current recorded deed, after the title, homestead and mortgage checks described above.
2. You get a link. No software to install.
3. Identity is established under section 117.265(4) — by the notary’s personal knowledge, or by credential analysis together with identity proofing.
4. You sign on screen, with both subscribing witnesses attending by audio-video technology. Section 689.01(2) is satisfied where a witness is either in your physical presence or present through audio-video technology when you sign, and hears you acknowledge the signature. The two witnesses do not have to be on the same session, and neither has to be in the room with you.
5. If you are outside Florida, section 117.265(3) requires the notary to confirm — verbally or in writing — that you want a Florida notary and Florida law to govern. It takes one sentence.
6. The executed instrument is e-recorded in the county where the property sits, usually within one to three business days under section 695.27.

A signer in another time zone, a property in a county neither of us has been to, and a recorded deed back in your inbox inside a week. That is the ordinary case, not the exceptional one.

Remote online notarization is not the same as an online notary service

This is the distinction worth understanding before you pay for the wrong thing, and it is the reason a $25 notarization sometimes costs somebody their house.

An online notary service notarizes whatever you upload. That is the entire engagement, and it is a legitimate one. The platform confirms who signed. It does not read your mortgage, it does not check whether the property is homestead or whether your spouse is constitutionally required to join, and it will not tell you that the deed you uploaded is the wrong instrument for what you are trying to do. It is not permitted to — deciding what the deed should say is the thing chapter 454 is about, and a notary who does it has crossed a line the notary is not insured for.

Here, the remote session is the last step, not the only one. By the time you are on that video call the deed has already been drafted by a Florida lawyer from your recorded deed, the homestead and joinder question has been answered, and the documentary stamp figure has been calculated and told to you. The technology is identical. What is behind the document is not.

There is one more trap worth naming, because it is the most common way a remote signing fails. Remote witnessing and remote online notarization are two separate mechanisms under two separate statutes, and a Florida deed needs both. Section 689.01(2) governs the witnesses. Part II of chapter 117 governs the notarial act. A session that produces a perfectly valid online notarization but only one witness has not produced a valid deed — and nobody finds out until the deed is needed. See signing remotely for the statutory detail.

To sign a Florida deed remotely, call (305) 224-6811 or send the current recorded deed. We will tell you which instrument the transfer needs, what the documentary stamp tax will be, and what it costs, before anything is scheduled. Hablamos español.

Grantor and grantee: who is who on a deed

Every deed has two sides, and the two words for them cause more confusion at the signing table than anything else on the instrument. So: what is a grantor, what is a grantee, and who is the grantor on a deed you are about to sign? They are worth two minutes.

The grantor is the person giving the property away. That is the current owner — the one whose name is already on the recorded deed, and the only person section 689.01(1) requires to sign in the presence of two subscribing witnesses. If you are adding your daughter to your house, you are the grantor.

The grantee is the person receiving it, and as a rule the grantee does not sign. The signature section 689.01(1) requires is the grantor’s. The person being added to the deed is usually not in the room. What the grantee does need is a name and a post office address on the face of the instrument, which section 695.26(1) has required for every grantee since January 2024.

One exception matters more than all the others. Where the property is homestead and the owner is married, article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution requires the spouse to join in the conveyance — so a non-owning spouse does sign, joining in the instrument rather than taking under it. A homestead deed signed without that joinder is void from the outset. That is set out under the homestead rule, and it is the single most common reason a deed that looked finished turns out not to be.

A grantee may also sign where the deed imposes covenants, restrictions or obligations the grantee is accepting. Outside those situations, the grantor signs and the grantee does not.

Grantor vs grantee: the difference in one line

The grantor gives. The grantee gets. If you cannot remember which is which, the grantor is the one who signs — the deed is being granted by that person.

Does the grantee own the property?

Once the deed is signed, delivered and accepted, yes — the grantee owns whatever interest the deed conveyed. Two qualifications decide most real cases.

The first is how much the grantee got. A quitclaim deed conveys whatever interest the grantor actually had, with no warranty that it was anything at all. If the grantor owned half, the grantee owns half. If the grantor owned nothing, that is what passed.

The second is what happens at the first death, and it is the question almost nobody asks in advance. Being named as a grantee does not, by itself, mean the grantee takes the whole property when the other owner dies. Under section 689.15 that depends entirely on words that either are or are not in the granting clause — see how you hold title, which is the section of this page that decides the most and gets read the least.

And a grantee under a quitclaim deed is not treated as a bargain hunter for recording purposes: section 695.01(2) deems such grantees purchasers for valuable consideration under the recording act.

Preparing your own deed, and who else is allowed to prepare one

Three questions get blended here, so take them separately.

Do I need a lawyer to add a name to a deed, or to remove one?

No. Florida does not require a lawyer to prepare a deed, and you can transfer a deed without an attorney. That is the honest answer and it is the one most sites bury.

Here is the part that matters more. Adding a name and removing a name are not the same job, and the second one is the one that goes wrong.

Adding a name is easy to execute and hard to undo. Once the deed is recorded you cannot take that person off without their signature — or a partition action. The decision that actually matters is not whether to use a lawyer; it is how the two of you will hold it, because section 689.15 makes the default the opposite of what most people assume. See how you hold title.

Removing a name raises a different problem, and it is the one that produces the angriest phone calls: a deed changes who owns the property and does nothing at all to who owes the loan. If you are asking whether you need a lawyer to remove a name from a deed because of a divorce or a separation, the deed is the easy half. See it does not change who owes the loan.

So: can you write your own deed, and do a transfer of deed without a lawyer? Yes. Should you, on a homestead property, with a spouse, with a mortgage, or with a child being added? That is a different question, and the rest of this page is the answer to it.

Do you need a lawyer for a quit claim deed? No — and a quitclaim is the one deed most people genuinely can handle alone, provided the property is not homestead, the owner is not married, and there is no mortgage. Those three conditions knock out most of the calls we get. And do you need a lawyer to change a deed? Not to change one. The question is whether the change you have in mind is the one that accomplishes what you want, and that is a different question from drafting.

Who generally prepares the deed?

In a sale, the deed is usually prepared by the closing agent’s office — a title agency with a Florida lawyer responsible for the work, or a firm handling the closing. That is the right arrangement for a sale, and the engagement ends when the transaction does.

Outside a sale — adding a child, removing an ex-spouse, funding a trust, a lady bird deed, cleaning up an error from 1998 — there is no closing and therefore no closing agent. That is the work this page is about, and it is where most people discover that nobody was ever assigned to it.

Preparing a deed for yourself is not the unlicensed practice of law

A person may always act on their own behalf, and section 454.18, Florida Statutes, says so in terms: any person, whether an attorney or not, may conduct his or her own cause. The unlicensed-practice cases are all about documents prepared for another person — see The Florida Bar v. Irizarry, 268 So. 2d 377 (Fla. 1972), where the Supreme Court of Florida held that drafting a contract of purchase and sale and completing a warranty deed and closing statement for another person is the practice of law.

Preparing a deed for someone else is a different matter. Section 454.23 provides that a person not licensed to practice law in Florida who practices law in this state, or holds himself or herself out as qualified to do so, commits a felony of the third degree. Chapter 454 does not define the practice of law; in Florida that definition comes from the Supreme Court of Florida, which holds exclusive jurisdiction over the subject under article V, section 15 of the Florida Constitution.

The practical point for a property owner is narrower and more useful than the criminal one. So does a deed have to be prepared by a lawyer? No. But if the person who prepared yours is not one, there is no malpractice carrier behind the document and nobody under a professional obligation to fix it when it turns out to be wrong. That is the real difference, and it only matters on the day something goes wrong — which, with deeds, is usually years later.

Can a notary prepare a deed in Florida?

A notary’s job is to take the acknowledgment — to confirm who signed and that they said they signed. Drafting the instrument for you is something else. A Florida notary who is not a lawyer and who decides what the deed should say, which deed form to use, or how title should be held is doing the thing chapter 454 is about. Filling in blanks on a form you selected and supplied is closer to the line; deciding what goes in those blanks is over it.

Two related restrictions catch people out. Under section 117.107(11) a notary may not notarize the signature of a spouse, son, daughter, mother or father — so the family member who happens to hold a commission is often the one person who cannot take the acknowledgment. And under section 117.107(12) a notary may not notarize a signature on an instrument in which the notary is a party or has a financial interest.

Can a title company prepare a deed in Florida?

In practice, deeds are routinely prepared in connection with closings by title agencies with a Florida lawyer responsible for the work. That is the relevant question — not whether the entity is called a title company, but whether a lawyer is behind the document. A title agency with no attorney on staff that drafts a deed for a customer outside a closing it is insuring is in the same position as any other non-lawyer preparer.

There is also a scope point worth knowing. A title company’s interest is in insuring the transaction in front of it. It is not engaged to tell you that the transfer will cost your children a stepped-up basis, or trigger a Medicaid transfer penalty, or that a lady bird deed would have achieved what you wanted without any of that. Those questions sit outside the closing file.

Can a real estate agent prepare a deed?

No. A real estate licensee may complete approved contract forms in a transaction they are handling. Drafting the conveyance itself is not part of that, and an agent who prepares a deed for a client is preparing a legal document for another person. Most brokerages prohibit it internally for exactly this reason.

Online deed forms, and what happens when the form is wrong

A form vendor sells you a document. It does not select the instrument, and its terms of service will say so. The two failures we see most often from out-of-state form packages are the same two every time: the witness lines are missing, because Florida is one of a small number of states that still requires subscribing witnesses on a deed at all, and the homestead joinder is missing, because most states have no equivalent rule.

The second of those does not produce a defective deed. It produces a void one. See the homestead section.

What Florida requires for a deed to be valid

Two subscribing witnesses

Section 689.01(1) requires that a conveyance of a freehold interest, or an interest for a term of more than one year, be made by a written instrument signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses by the party making the conveyance. Florida is one of a small number of states that still requires witnesses on a deed at all, and it is the requirement that out-of-state form packages most often miss. Leases of real property are expressly carved out and need no subscribing witnesses.

One correction worth making, because it circulates widely: section 689.01 does not require the witnesses to sign in the presence of each other. The statute requires the grantor to sign in the presence of two subscribing witnesses. The First District said so directly in Sweat v. Yates, 463 So. 2d 306 (Fla. 1st DCA 1984) — the statute does not require that witnesses subscribe in the presence of the grantor or in the presence of each other, nor that they sign before delivery. Medina v. Orange County, 147 So. 2d 556 (Fla. 2d DCA 1962) upheld a deed where a witness subscribed after delivery. The mutual-presence rule people are thinking of belongs to the execution of wills under section 732.502, which is a different statute with different consequences.

Who can witness a Florida deed — and who should not

Section 689.01 requires two subscribing witnesses and does not list qualifications for them. That is not the reassurance it sounds like.

That is not the end of it, and the usual reassurance runs backwards. Section 732.504(2) expressly saves a will from being invalidated because an interested person witnessed it. There is no equivalent statute for deeds. And the Second District has said that under Florida law a grantee may not generally sign as a witness to a deed — George Anderson Training & Consulting, Inc. v. Miller Bey Paralegal & Financial, LLC, 313 So. 3d 214 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021).

So the deed is the instrument with less protection, not more. Use two witnesses who take nothing under the deed. There is no upside to finding out where the line is.

The notary is a different question, and the answer is usually welcome: the notary may also serve as one of the two subscribing witnesses. See Walker v. City of Jacksonville, 360 So. 2d 52 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978). But the notary has to actually sign as a witness to count as one. Taking the acknowledgment does not make the notary a subscribing witness — American General Home Equity v. Countrywide (Fla. 5th DCA 2000); McKoy v. DeSilvio (Fla. 2d DCA 2008). If the notary is going to be a witness, the notary’s name has to appear on a witness line as well as in the notarial certificate.

Notarization is about recording, not validity

This distinction is conflated more than any other in this area, and getting it right is genuinely useful.

Section 689.01 says nothing about notarization. What it requires is a writing, the grantor’s signature, and two subscribing witnesses. A properly witnessed deed that was delivered and accepted can pass title between the grantor and the grantee even though it was never notarized. Sweat v. Yates again: the recording of a deed is not essential to its validity as between the parties or those taking with notice.

Notarization belongs to a different statute. Section 695.03 provides that to entitle any instrument concerning real property to be recorded, its execution must be acknowledged by the party executing it, proved by a subscribing witness, or otherwise legalized or authenticated. Within Florida that means before a judge, a clerk or deputy clerk, a United States commissioner or magistrate, a notary public, or a civil-law notary, under seal. Section 117.05(4) sets out what the notarial certificate has to contain: the venue, the type of act, whether the signer appeared physically or by audio-video technology, the exact date, the signer’s name, the type of identification relied on, and the notary’s signature, printed name and seal.

So the sentence “a deed must be notarized to be valid in Florida” is not accurate. Notarization is what makes a deed recordable. That said, an unrecorded deed is close to a practical disaster even when technically valid, for reasons set out under what recording actually buys you. The distinction matters most when a family finds an old unrecorded deed in a drawer and assumes it is worthless. It may not be.

Deed vs title: they are not the same thing

People use the two words interchangeably and then get a confusing answer from a title company. The distinction is simple once stated.

The deed is a document. The title is the ownership itself. A house deed is the piece of paper that moves ownership from one person to another. Title is the legal ownership that moves. You sign a deed; you hold title.

So the question “which is more important, the title or the deed” has an answer, and it is neither. The deed is the instrument that transfers title, and a defective deed transfers defective title or none at all — which is the whole subject of this page. But the deed is not the ownership, and holding a copy of one proves less than people assume.

Three consequences follow, and each of them comes up in practice.

• Losing the paper does not lose the house. The recorded instrument lives in the county’s official records permanently. A certified copy costs $2.00 plus $1.00 per page.
• Holding a deed does not settle who owns what. Title is the sum of everything in the chain — earlier deeds, mortgages, liens, judgments, easements. The most recent deed is one link in it.
• House title vs deed is the wrong comparison for the question people are usually asking. When someone asks whether they are “on the title,” what they generally want to know is whether their name is on the most recent recorded deed and how that deed had them take it. That is a two-minute answer from the recorded instrument, and it is where every conversation on this page starts.

Signing remotely: remote witnessing and remote online notarization

Florida has allowed this since 2020, and the vocabulary is confusing because four terms are used for overlapping things. Remote online notarization — RON — is the notarial act performed over audio-video technology. An electronic notary in Florida is a commissioned online notary authorized to perform it. A remote notary is the same person described loosely. If you have been searching remote notary Florida, RON notary Florida or Florida remote online notary, all four phrases point at the same commission under part II of chapter 117. What follows is what each statute actually requires, and it is worth reading if you are signing at a distance, because these are two separate mechanisms under two separate statutes and a deed needs both to work.

Remote witnessing. Section 689.01(2), added in 2020, allows the two-witness requirement to be satisfied by witnesses who are present and electronically signing by means of audio-video communication technology as defined in section 117.201. Under section 689.01(2)(b), the requirement is met if the witness is either in the physical presence of the principal or present through audio-video technology when the principal signs, and the witness hears the principal acknowledge having signed. Section 689.01(3) then protects instruments witnessed that way from constructive-notice challenges based on imperfect compliance, while expressly preserving challenges founded on fraud, forgery, impersonation, duress, incapacity, undue influence, minority, illegality, unconscionability, or any other basis not related to the act of witnessing.

Remote online notarization. Part II of chapter 117 governs the notarial act itself. The point that matters to an owner who has moved away, or who spends half the year somewhere else, is this: a Florida online notary who is physically in Florida may notarize regardless of where the signer is — sections 117.209(3) and 117.265(1). The signer does not have to be in Florida. There is no requirement that the document relate to a Florida court or a Florida agency.

Two conditions attach. Where the signer is outside Florida, section 117.265(3) requires the notary to confirm — verbally or by written consent — that the signer wants a Florida notary and Florida law to govern. And identity has to be established under section 117.265(4), by the notary’s personal knowledge or by credential analysis together with identity proofing. For a signer physically outside the United States, section 117.201(6) allows a foreign government passport to serve as the government-issued identification even without a USCIS stamp.

In practice this means a Florida deed can be signed from Ohio, from Bogotá or from Madrid without anybody boarding a plane. It also means the two mechanisms should be arranged together — a session that produces a valid online notarization but only one witness has not produced a deed.

The legal description of property, and why the parcel number is not one

A deed conveys the land the legal description identifies. Nothing else on the instrument does that job — not the street address, not the folio number or parcel identification number, and not the name the neighborhood goes by.

Florida descriptions come in two shapes. A platted description names a lot and block in a recorded subdivision plat. A metes and bounds description walks the boundary in courses and distances from a fixed starting point, and has to return to where it began — a description that fails to close describes nothing. The folio or parcel identification number is neither of those. It is the property appraiser’s filing reference, and it changes when the appraiser reorganizes; the legal description does not.

The test Florida courts apply is whether a surveyor, relying on the description read together with the facts and circumstances the instrument refers to, can locate the land: Campbell v. Carruth, 32 Fla. 264, 13 So. 432 (1893). A description that is patently ambiguous is void, and parol evidence cannot rescue it.

Two decisions show where that line falls:

• Mitchell v. Thomas, 467 So. 2d 326 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985) — a metes and bounds description that fails to close is patently ambiguous and a nullity.
• Connelly v. Smith, 97 So. 2d 865 (Fla. 3d DCA 1957) — “the South 66 feet” with no section, township or range is a nullity.

This is why the first thing we ask for is the recorded deed rather than a tax bill. The legal description gets copied forward from the instrument that already conveyed the property. It does not get retyped from a property appraiser’s website, where it is frequently abbreviated to something that would not survive any of the three cases above.

When an old deed’s defects cure themselves

Section 95.231(1) is worth knowing about before anyone panics over a deed from decades ago. Five years after recording, a missing seal, a missing witness or witnesses, and a defect in or absence of an acknowledgment are cured, and the instrument has the effect it purported to have. So the 1994 deed with only one witness on it is very probably fine.

The limits matter as much as the rule. The statute does not run in favor of fraud, it does not defeat a person in adverse possession, and it does not apply where litigation is pending. And — this is the part that catches people — section 95.231 does not cure a missing homestead joinder. That defect is constitutional rather than a formality of execution, and a deed that is void from the outset does not become good by sitting in the records. See the next section but one.

What the clerk requires before a deed can be recorded

Section 695.26(1) sets out what must appear on the face of an instrument before the clerk may record it. Each item is small, and any one of them can get a deed rejected at the counter or recorded in a form that causes trouble later.

Requirement	Where it goes
Name of each person who executed the instrument, legibly printed, typewritten or stamped	Immediately beneath that person’s signature, with the post office address
Name and post office address of the natural person who prepared it, or under whose supervision it was prepared	The “prepared by” block
Name of each witness, legibly printed, typewritten or stamped	Immediately beneath that witness’s signature, with the post office address
Name of the notary public or other officer taking the acknowledgment	Legibly printed, typewritten or stamped beneath the signature
Blank space reserved for the clerk	Three inches by three inches at the top right of the first page, one inch by three inches at the top right of each later page
Name and post office address of each grantee	Required for any instrument other than a mortgage

Most of that list is decades old — section 695.26 dates to 1990. What is new is the addresses. Chapter 2023-238, Laws of Florida, added the post office address requirements for each executing party, each witness and each grantee, effective 1 January 2024. That single change is why deed forms that worked perfectly well in 2022 now come back from the counter.

The exceptions, including one for deeds signed out of state

Section 695.26 is a gatekeeping rule at the counter, not an absolute bar, and it has three qualifications that rarely appear anywhere.

Subsection (2) gives the clerk discretion to accept an instrument where a name or address sits somewhere other than the required position, if the connection between signature, name and address is apparent.

Subsection (3) — not subsection (2), as is often written — contains the exceptions. The section does not apply at all to instruments executed before 1 July 1991; to decrees, orders, judgments or writs of any court; to instruments executed, acknowledged or proved outside Florida; to wills; to plats; or to instruments prepared or executed by a public officer other than a notary.

That third one is worth sitting with. A Florida owner who spends the winter in Michigan, signs there and has the signature acknowledged there is outside section 695.26 entirely. The 2024 address requirements do not reach that deed.

Subsection (4) provides that a clerk’s own failure to comply does not impair the validity of the recordation or of the constructive notice imparted by it. A non-compliant deed that gets recorded anyway is validly recorded and gives notice.

Florida’s statutory deed forms

Florida publishes model language for two instruments. Section 689.02 sets out a form for a warranty deed — an instrument drawn on that model is what title professionals mean by a statutory warranty deed. Section 689.025, added by chapter 2023-238 effective 1 July 2023, sets out one for a quitclaim deed.

Both are permissive rather than mandatory — the statutes say a deed may be in substantially the form given. A deed that departs from the model is not thereby defective. But section 689.025 carries two requirements worth noting because they travel with the instrument regardless of the form used: the legal description must be legibly printed, typewritten or stamped, and the deed must include a blank space for the parcel identification number, which is to be filled in before recording where the number is available.

The statute is explicit that failure to include the blank space or the parcel identification number does not affect the validity of the conveyance or the recordability of the deed. And the parcel number is not part of the legal description and cannot stand in for one — which brings you back to the legal description.

What recording actually buys you

Under section 695.01(1), no conveyance, transfer or mortgage of real property is good and effectual against creditors or subsequent purchasers for valuable consideration and without notice unless it is recorded. The Fourth District put it plainly in B.A. Mortgage, LLC v. Baigorria, 300 So. 3d 198 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020): Florida is a notice jurisdiction, and the act of recording an instrument constitutes constructive notice of a prior encumbrance to everyone who comes afterwards.

Read from the other direction, that is the whole point of recording. Recording puts your deed on the public record and makes everyone who deals with the property afterwards charged with knowing about it. Leaving it unrecorded leaves the door open to somebody who buys from the same grantor, pays value, and never learns your deed exists.

One detail surprises people who assume a quitclaim deed puts a buyer on inquiry: section 695.01(2) provides that grantees under a quitclaim deed are deemed purchasers for valuable consideration for purposes of the recording act.

So the deed in the drawer may well be valid between the two people who signed it, and simultaneously worth nothing against the buyer who purchased from the same grantor last year and recorded. That is the practical reason to record immediately, and it has nothing to do with whether the deed is any good.

How you hold title decides what happens when an owner dies

This is the part of a deed that people think about least and that decides the most. Almost every Florida residential deed conveys a fee simple — the whole ownership interest, unconditional and of unlimited duration — so the live question is rarely what estate passes. It is how the new owners hold it between them. Two deeds can name exactly the same two people and produce opposite results at the first death, and the only difference between them is a phrase.

Section 689.15 is the governing rule, and it is counter-intuitive: Florida abolished the right of survivorship in joint tenancies. The right exists only where the instrument creating the estate expressly provides for it. The one exception the statute preserves is an estate by the entirety, which arises between a married couple.

Three ways of holding a Florida house between two or more people, and the choice is made in the granting clause of the deed rather than afterwards. Joint tenants with right of survivorship — the survivor takes the whole. Tenants in common — each share passes under that owner’s will, which means probate. Tenancy by the entirety — available only to a married couple, and the strongest of the three. Joint tenants vs tenants in common is the comparison most people are actually making when they ask what to put on a deed, and in Florida the answer defaults to tenants in common unless the deed says otherwise. An unmarried couple buying a house together cannot hold by the entirety at all, so unless their deed says otherwise they are tenants in common by operation of the statute.

The consequence is the single most common unintended outcome in Florida deed preparation. A parent adds a child to the deed, both names are on it, everyone assumes the child takes the house automatically at the parent’s death — and because the deed never said “with right of survivorship,” section 689.15 makes it a tenancy in common. The parent’s half goes through the parent’s estate. The probate the deed was meant to avoid happens anyway, and now it happens to a half interest in a house somebody else already owns the other half of.

Joint tenants with right of survivorship

Two or more owners hold together, and on the death of one the survivors take the whole. Nothing passes through the deceased owner’s estate and no probate is needed for that asset.

In Florida this only happens if the deed says so. The survivorship language has to be express — the phrase “as joint tenants with right of survivorship,” or words to that effect, in the granting clause. Simply naming two grantees does not create it, and neither do the words “joint tenants” standing alone. See In re Silvian’s Estate, 347 So. 2d 632 (Fla. 4th DCA 1977) and La Pierre v. Kalergis, 251 So. 2d 885 (Fla. 1st DCA 1971), approved in relevant part, 257 So. 2d 33 (Fla. 1971), for how Florida courts have read section 689.15. The Supreme Court added a second requirement in the same case: a joint tenancy in Florida realty also needs the four unities of interest, title, time and possession.

Survivorship is a blunt instrument. It defeats a will — the surviving owner takes regardless of what the deceased owner’s estate plan said — and it is irrevocable without the other owner’s cooperation. It also exposes the property to the other owner’s creditors, divorce and bankruptcy from the day the deed is recorded.

Tenants in common

Each owner holds a distinct, separately transferable share. There is no survivorship. When an owner dies, that share passes under the owner’s will or, without one, by intestate succession — which means probate.

This is Florida’s default for co-owners who are not married to each other, and it is what a deed produces when nobody thought about the question. Shares need not be equal. Any co-tenant may sell or mortgage their own share without the others’ consent, and any co-tenant may force a sale of the whole property through a partition action — which is how a great many family co-ownership arrangements actually end.

Tenancy by the entirety (married couples only)

The form reserved for married couples, and the strongest of the three. Neither spouse owns a divisible share; both own the whole. The survivor takes automatically on the first death, and — the reason it matters beyond estate planning — property held this way is generally beyond the reach of a creditor of only one spouse.

Florida requires six unities: possession, interest, title, time, survivorship and marriage — Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates, 780 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 2001). A conveyance of real property to a husband and wife is presumed to create a tenancy by the entireties without any special wording, which is why entireties questions usually turn on whether the couple was married when the deed was delivered rather than on what the deed said.

Divorce ends it. On dissolution of marriage, section 689.15 converts an estate by the entirety into a tenancy in common — the survivorship disappears by operation of law, without anyone signing anything. Former spouses who never got round to re-deeding the house are frequently surprised to learn they are now tenants in common with an ex.

If two names are going on a Florida deed, the vesting question should be settled before the drafting starts, not discovered afterwards. Our note on adding or removing a name from a Florida deed works through the practical consequences of each choice.

The homestead rule that defeats more deeds than any other

If the property is homestead and the owner is married, this is the provision that matters most.

Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution provides:

The homestead shall not be subject to devise if the owner is survived by spouse or minor child, except the homestead may be devised to the owner’s spouse if there be no minor child. The owner of homestead real estate, joined by the spouse if married, may alienate the homestead by mortgage, sale or gift and, if married, may by deed transfer the title to an estate by the entirety with the spouse.

Two separate restrictions that get merged

Read the two sentences apart, because they do different jobs and a great deal of published material runs them together.

The devise restriction, in the first sentence, is triggered by a surviving spouse or a minor child.

The alienation restriction, in the second sentence, governs conveying homestead during life by mortgage, sale or gift, and it requires only the spouse’s joinder. Minor children are not mentioned in the alienation clause at all. The widely repeated claim that a Florida homeowner cannot sell or mortgage a homestead while they have minor children is not what the constitution says.

The spouse must join even when the spouse is not on the deed

The constitutional trigger is the phrase “joined by the spouse if married.” The requirement attaches to the owner being married, not to how title is held. A married person whose name is the only name on the deed still needs the spouse to join in order to alienate homestead. See Vera v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 178 So. 3d 517 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015).

And because the clause says “mortgage, sale or gift” without naming a transferee, it does not distinguish between a stranger, an adult child and a trustee. A gift deed of homestead to a child, and a deed of homestead into the owner’s own revocable trust, are both alienations. Clemons v. Thornton, 993 So. 2d 1054 (Fla. 1st DCA 2008) held an attempted conveyance of a remainder interest in homestead to a daughter ineffective without the wife’s joinder.

Here is the part the rest of the internet hedges on, and it should not. A conveyance of homestead by a married owner without the spouse joining is not merely challengeable. Florida courts have held, consistently and for sixty years, that it is void ab initio — a nullity from the moment it was signed:

• Mendia v. Galvez, 418 So. 3d 838 (Fla. 3d DCA 2025) — a 2021 quitclaim deed of the marital home to a relative, signed without the husband joining: void ab initio.
• Nordman v. McCormick, 715 So. 2d 310 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) — a warranty deed from an owner to his own wife, without her joinder: void ab initio.
• Chapman v. Chapman, 526 So. 2d 131 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988) — surveys the line and confirms the rule.
• Robbins v. Robbins, 411 So. 2d 1024 (Fla. 2d DCA 1982); Gotshall v. Taylor, 196 So. 2d 479 (Fla. 4th DCA 1967).

The consequences of “void” rather than “voidable” are the whole point. A void deed conveys nothing. It cannot be ratified. It is not cured by the passage of time under section 95.231. It is not saved by a bona fide purchaser who bought without knowing. The property never left the owner. The only fix is a new deed, properly joined — and if the owner has since died or lost capacity, that fix may no longer be available to anyone.

One narrowing worth knowing. Jameson v. Jameson, 387 So. 2d 351 (Fla. 1980) holds that the joinder requirement governs alienation to a third party, and is not required where the spouse is the grantee. Section 689.11(1) sits alongside it: a conveyance of real estate including homestead made by one spouse to the other conveys legal title to the grantee spouse in all cases where it would be effective if the parties were not married, and the grantee spouse need not execute the conveyance. That statute was upheld in Williams v. Foerster, 335 So. 2d 810 (Fla. 1976) — but the same decision held it does not reach homestead already held as tenants by the entirety. A husband-to-wife conveyance of entireties homestead was ineffective.

And a waiver does not do what people hope. Section 732.7025(2) provides that a waiver of spousal homestead rights in a deed does not waive the constitutional restriction on alienation without joinder. Mendia held that neither a 1998 post-nuptial agreement nor a 1998 quitclaim deed that was silent on homestead waived those rights.

Devise and lifetime transfer are different questions

Section 732.4015 restates the constitutional devise restriction and extends it into trusts, defining “owner” to include the grantor of a trust described in section 733.707(3), and defining “devise” to include a disposition by trust of the portion of the trust estate that would be homestead if titled in the grantor’s name. Cutler v. Cutler, 994 So. 2d 341 (Fla. 3d DCA 2008) applies it to a revocable living trust.

Section 732.4017 is the counterweight. An inter vivos transfer of homestead, including a transfer in trust, is not a devise if the owner does not retain the power to revoke or revest the interest in the owner.

Keep those apart. Section 732.4017 answers the devise question. It does not waive the article X, section 4(c) joinder requirement for the lifetime deed itself, and it could not — the Legislature cannot abrogate a constitutional requirement by statute. A married person deeding homestead into an irrevocable trust still needs the spouse to join, even though the transfer is not a devise.

What happens when a homestead devise fails is set out in section 732.401: the surviving spouse takes a life estate with a vested remainder to the descendants, or may elect within six months to take an undivided one-half as a tenant in common instead. See Ballard v. Pritchard, 332 So. 3d 570 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021), and our page on a surviving spouse’s rights in Florida.

Signing a deed under a power of attorney

An agent under a Florida durable power of attorney can execute a deed, but three things have to line up, and a general power of attorney downloaded from anywhere will usually fail at least one of them.

Homestead. Section 689.111 allows a deed or mortgage of homestead to be executed by an attorney in fact — subsection (1) where the owner is unmarried, subsection (2) where the owner is married or the property is held by the entireties — provided the power of attorney was executed with the same formalities as a deed. What the statute expressly does not do is dispense with the constitutional joinder requirement. It permits the joinder to be accomplished through the power of attorney; it does not remove it.

Enumerated authority. Section 709.2202(1) provides that an agent may exercise certain powers only if the principal signed or initialed next to that specific enumeration in the instrument. Two of them come up constantly in deed work: the authority to create or change rights of survivorship, and the authority to create or change a beneficiary designation. Making a gift is on the same list. A power of attorney that authorizes the agent broadly to “convey real property” but does not separately enumerate and initial these does not authorize a deed that changes how title is held.

How the power of attorney itself was signed. Section 709.2202(6) provides that a power of attorney executed by a Florida-domiciled principal that was witnessed remotely, rather than in the physical presence of the witnesses, is not effective to grant any of those enumerated authorities. A remotely witnessed power of attorney can still authorize an ordinary sale. It cannot authorize the survivorship or beneficiary changes.

Exceeding the authority granted is not a technicality either. A deed signed under a power of attorney that never granted the specific authority the deed exercises is exposed on that ground, and a gift of the principal’s homestead is the common example. Our Florida power of attorney page covers the execution requirements in more detail.

Documentary stamp tax, and the mortgage surprise

This is where do-it-yourself transfers most often produce an unexpected bill.

Section 201.02(1)(a) taxes deeds and other instruments conveying an interest in real property at 70 cents on each $100 of the consideration. The definition of consideration is where the trouble sits. It includes money paid or agreed to be paid, the discharge of an obligation, and the amount of any mortgage or other encumbrance, whether or not the underlying indebtedness is assumed. See Kendall House Apartments, Inc. v. Department of Revenue, 245 So. 2d 221 (Fla. 1971) — the purpose of section 201.02 is to tax the total consideration involved in a transfer, including any outstanding mortgage.

So a parent who signs a quitclaim deed transferring a mortgaged house to a child for love and affection has, in the ordinary case, made a transfer for consideration equal to the outstanding mortgage balance, and tax is owed on that balance even though no money changed hands. Florida Administrative Code rule 12B-4.014(2)(a) exempts a gift of realty only where the property is unencumbered, and rule 12B-4.013(19) treats mortgages encumbering the property as part of total consideration. Because the rate applies to each $100 or portion of it, a nominal-consideration deed on unencumbered property rounds up to a floor of 70 cents.

The limit on that rule, which decides real cases

“In the ordinary case” is doing real work in that paragraph, and the qualification is worth understanding before anyone writes a check.

Documentary stamp tax turns on a genuine shifting of economic burden from the grantor to the grantee — Abramson v. Straughn, 348 So. 2d 1172 (Fla. 4th DCA 1977), applying Florida Department of Revenue v. De Maria, 338 So. 2d 838 (Fla. 1976). Where love and affection is the only consideration and the grantee pays nothing and is obligated to pay nothing, the Florida Supreme Court held in Culbreath v. Reid, 65 So. 2d 556 (Fla. 1953), that no tax is due.

Put those together and the mortgage question resolves like this:

• If the child was not already liable on the mortgage, the conveyance shifts the burden of that debt, and the outstanding balance is taxable consideration.
• If the child was already fully liable on the same debt — a co-borrower, for instance — no new burden shifts, and the balance is not new consideration. Straughn v. Story, 334 So. 2d 337 (Fla. 1st DCA 1976), cert. denied, 348 So. 2d 954 (Fla. 1977), and Florida Department of Revenue v. De Maria, 338 So. 2d 838 (Fla. 1976).

This is a factual question, not a form question, and it is one of several reasons the tax analysis belongs before the signing rather than at the recording counter.

Rates, counties and exemptions

Situation	Documentary stamp tax	Authority
Deed anywhere in Florida except Miami-Dade	70 cents per $100 of consideration	§ 201.02(1)(a)
Deed in Miami-Dade	60 cents per $100 — the county implemented ch. 83-220, so the later 10-cent increase does not apply	§ 201.0205
Miami-Dade surtax, single-family residence	No surtax at all	§ 201.031(1)
Miami-Dade surtax, property other than a single-family residence	County surtax applies on top of the 60 cents	§ 201.031; § 125.0167; county as defined by § 125.011(1)
Gift of unencumbered property, nominal consideration	Minimum tax — 70 cents	§ 201.02(1)(a); r. 12B-4.014(2)(a)
Mortgaged property transferred for no money, grantee not previously liable	Taxable on the outstanding mortgage balance	§ 201.02(1)(a); r. 12B-4.013(19)
Homestead transferred between spouses, where the only consideration is an existing mortgage or lien	Exempt	§ 201.02(7)(b)
Homestead transferred from parent to child subject to a mortgage	Taxable on the mortgage balance where the burden shifts	§ 201.02(1)(a); Abramson v. Straughn
Enhanced life estate (lady bird) deed with full retained powers, property mortgaged	Minimum tax — no present beneficial interest passes	§ 201.02(1)(a); Crescent Miami Center; TAA 20B4-004
Ordinary life estate deed vesting a remainder in a third party, property mortgaged	Taxable on the outstanding mortgage balance	§ 201.02(1)(a); r. 12B-4.013(16); Kach v. Cooley
Corrective deed correcting an error and conveying no new interest	Exempt	r. 12B-4.014(3)

Two of those rows deserve emphasis. The Miami-Dade figure is widely published as 60 cents plus a 45-cent surtax, which overstates the tax on exactly the transaction most readers have — section 201.031(1) excludes from the surtax any document where the interest conveyed involves only a single-family residence, and the Department has confirmed that the exclusion reaches condominium units. And the spousal exemption in section 201.02(7)(b) covers homestead transfers from one spouse to another, from one spouse to both, or from both spouses to one, but it is spousal only. It does not reach a parent-to-child transfer.

Rules 12B-4.012, 12B-4.013 and 12B-4.014 were amended effective 25 January 2026, and nothing in those amendments addressed life estate or enhanced life estate deeds.

Who pays, and what happens if nobody does

Section 201.02(1)(a) reaches everyone who makes, signs, issues or accepts the instrument, so a grantee is not a bystander to the tax. In a sale the contract usually allocates it and by convention in most of Florida the seller pays on the deed; in a family transfer there is no contract and the parties sort it out between them. What matters is that it gets paid, because the clerk will not record without it and the liability does not evaporate if the deed is recorded elsewhere or later.

Section 201.17 sets the price of getting it wrong: the unpaid tax, plus a penalty of 10 percent of the unpaid amount for a failure of not more than 30 days and a further 10 percent for each additional 30 days, capped at 50 percent, plus interest at 1 percent per month. A deliberate deficiency established by clear and convincing evidence carries a penalty of 200 percent. There is a misdemeanor provision as well.

A deed changes who owns the property. It does not change who owes the loan.

If one sentence on this page is worth reading twice, it is that one. Signing your name off a deed does not sign your name off the note. The lender is not a party to the deed, was not asked, and is not bound by it. People deed a house to an ex-spouse in a divorce, or to a child, and go on being personally liable for the mortgage for years without realizing it — until a missed payment shows up on their credit report.

Getting off the loan requires the lender’s agreement: a refinance in the new owner’s name, a formal assumption, or a release the lender is under no obligation to give.

The due-on-sale clause, and the transfers it cannot touch

A due-on-sale clause is the term in nearly every residential mortgage letting the lender call the whole balance if the property is transferred without consent. It is the reason people are told never to deed a mortgaged house, and that advice is roughly half right. The Garn-St Germain Act, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), makes a federal exception for a specific list of transfers — and the list is shorter and stranger than most people expect.

The related worry is the reverse one: that transferring the property will let the lender call the entire loan due. Almost every Florida mortgage contains a due-on-sale clause, and federal law generally lets lenders enforce it.

But the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), carves out a list of transfers a lender may not use as a trigger, for loans secured by residential real property containing fewer than five dwelling units — which covers the ordinary house, condominium and residential manufactured home. The exempt transfers include:

• A transfer by devise, descent or operation of law on the death of a joint tenant or tenant by the entirety
• A transfer to a relative resulting from the death of a borrower
• A transfer where the spouse or children of the borrower become an owner of the property
• A transfer resulting from a decree of dissolution of marriage, a legal separation agreement, or an incidental property settlement agreement by which the spouse of the borrower becomes an owner
• A transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary, and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property
• The granting of a leasehold interest of three years or less with no option to purchase
• The creation of a subordinate lien not relating to a transfer of rights of occupancy

The statute enumerates nine exempt transfers in all. The two not listed above — a purchase money security interest in household appliances, and any further transfer the federal regulations describe — do not arise on a deed.

Read that list carefully, because most family deeds fall inside it. A parent adding a child, a spouse taking the house in a divorce, a homeowner moving the property into their own revocable trust — all protected. What is not on the list is a transfer to a sibling, a nephew, a friend, an LLC, or a trust in which the borrower is not a beneficiary. Those are ordinary due-on-sale territory, and the fact that lenders rarely call loans in a rising-rate market is a commercial observation, not a legal protection.

That last point is worth a line of its own, because it is the mistake landlords make. If you are planning to transfer property to an LLC, moving a rental property into one is an ordinary transfer for due-on-sale purposes — the Garn-St Germain list protects spouses, children and the borrower’s own revocable trust, and an LLC is none of those. It is also a transfer for documentary stamp purposes where the property is mortgaged. Neither point makes it a bad idea; both make it a decision to take with the mortgage in front of you rather than after the deed is recorded.

The tax nobody warns you about

Documentary stamp tax is the one people ask about. It is almost never the largest number in the transaction.

Step-up in basis: the difference between giving now and leaving later

Under Internal Revenue Code section 1014, property acquired from a decedent takes a basis equal to its fair market value at the date of death. Under section 1015, property acquired by lifetime gift takes the donor’s basis and carries it over.

The practical effect is stark. A parent who bought a Florida house in 1988 for $60,000, now worth $600,000, and who adds an adult child to the deed today, has given that child a carryover basis in the interest transferred. If the child later sells, the gain on that share is measured from the 1988 figure. Had the same house passed at the parent’s death, the child’s basis in it would have been the date-of-death value and a sale shortly afterwards would have produced very little gain at all.

One precision: the carryover applies to the fractional interest actually transferred, not to the whole property. Adding one child to a deed does not carry the whole basis over.

This is the strongest argument for the enhanced life estate deed and it is a tax argument rather than a probate one. Because the grantor of such a deed retains possession and enjoyment for life, and retains the power to designate who ultimately takes, the property is included in the grantor’s gross estate under section 2036(a)(1) and (a)(2) — and inclusion in the gross estate is what produces the stepped-up basis under section 1014(b)(9). The instrument avoids probate and preserves the step-up. A plain gift deed to the same child avoids probate and destroys it.

Quitclaim deed vs lady bird deed: the same house, the same child, two very different outcomes

This is the comparison worth having before any deed gets drafted, and the step-up in basis is usually the number that decides it.

A note on the term, since it is written three ways. Accountants hyphenate it as step-up in basis. Most people type step up in basis or stepped up basis. They all mean the same thing: the basis is reset to the value at the date of death, so the gain that built up during the owner’s lifetime is never taxed.

Take the house from the example above — bought in 1988 for $60,000, worth $600,000 today, one adult child, and say it still carries a $200,000 mortgage. Two instruments, both of which a form vendor will happily sell you.

Question	Quitclaim deed adding the child now	Lady bird deed (enhanced life estate)
Basis in the child’s hands	Carryover basis under § 1015 — measured from the 1988 figure on the interest transferred	Date-of-death value under § 1014, because the retained powers include the property in the grantor’s gross estate under § 2036(a)(1) and (a)(2)
Does it avoid probate?	Not by itself. Without express survivorship language, § 689.15 makes it a tenancy in common and the parent’s half still goes through the estate	Yes — the remainder passes at death outside probate
Documentary stamp tax on the $200,000 balance	Generally taxable on the outstanding balance where the child was not already liable — $1,400 outside Miami-Dade	Minimum tax on a properly drafted deed: no present beneficial interest passes, so there is no conveyance for the balance to be measured against
Gift tax filing	A completed gift. Form 709 is likely required even though no tax is owed	Not a completed gift, because the grantor keeps an unrestricted power to divest. No Form 709 when it is signed
Medicaid look-back	An outright transfer for less than fair market value inside the 60-month window can produce a penalty period	Generally treated differently in Florida practice, on the reasoning that nothing presently passes
Save Our Homes cap	No reset — but only where the deed runs from the parent to the parent and child together, so the parent is named as both grantor and grantee, and the child does not claim homestead. A deed from parent to child alone resets the cap	No reset — the same person remains entitled to the exemption
Can the parent change their mind?	No. Once recorded, the child cannot be removed without their signature — or a partition action	Yes. The retained powers let the grantor sell, mortgage or divest the remainderman without anyone’s consent
Exposure to the child’s creditors and divorce	Yes, from the day the deed is recorded	Nothing passes to the child during the grantor’s life

Read the first row and the last row together, because they are the whole argument. The quitclaim deed gives away control today and the step-up in basis at death, and charges $1,400 for the privilege. The lady bird deed keeps both.

There are situations where a quitclaim is still the right instrument — the parties are unrelated, the property is unmortgaged, somebody is being removed rather than added, a title defect is being cleared. But “I want my daughter to get the house” is not one of them, and it is the single most common reason people arrive on this page asking for a quitclaim deed.

Gift tax and Form 709

Deeding an interest in property to someone for nothing is a gift. For 2026 the annual exclusion is $19,000 per recipient and the lifetime basic exclusion is $15 million, so very few Florida families will owe gift tax. Many will still have a filing obligation, and a Form 709 that was never filed is a problem that surfaces at the worst possible time.

Two refinements matter here and are usually stated wrong:

• The annual exclusion does not apply to a gift of a remainder interest. A remainder is a future interest, and section 2503(b) limits the exclusion to present interests. So a traditional life estate deed giving the remainder to children is a completed, reportable gift with no $19,000-per-child shelter against it.
• An enhanced life estate deed is not a completed gift at all. Because the grantor keeps an unrestricted power to sell, mortgage and divest the remaindermen, nothing is complete for gift tax purposes under Treasury Regulation § 25.2511-2(c). No Form 709 is required when the deed is signed.

That distinction — completed gift versus incomplete gift — is doing an enormous amount of work, and it is a drafting question. It depends entirely on which powers the grantor actually retained on the face of the instrument.

Medicaid: the look-back and the estate

Two separate Medicaid questions attach to a deed, and they run in opposite directions.

The look-back. Florida applies a 60-month look-back to asset transfers for long-term care eligibility, under Florida Administrative Code rule 65A-1.712 and 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c). A transfer for less than fair market value inside that window produces a penalty period calculated by dividing the uncompensated value by the average monthly private-pay nursing facility rate. Deeding a house to a child for love and affection is exactly the transfer the rule is aimed at.

An enhanced life estate deed is generally treated differently in Florida practice, on the reasoning that the grantor retains an unrestricted power to revoke, sell and divest, so no present interest passes and nothing has been transferred. That is the prevailing view and it is why the instrument is used so heavily here. It is fair to say it is not spelled out in the Florida regulations, and anyone relying on it in an application within the look-back window should have the file looked at rather than assume.

Estate recovery. Section 409.9101 accomplishes Florida’s recovery by filing a claim in the probate proceeding, under part VII of chapter 733. Florida’s recovery reaches the probate estate only. The state has not adopted the expanded definition of “estate” that federal law permits under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(b)(4)(B), which several other states have. Property that passes outside probate — by an enhanced life estate deed, by survivorship, by a funded trust — is outside the reach of Florida estate recovery as the statute presently stands.

The Florida homestead exemption, Save Our Homes, and portability

A new deed can reset a property tax assessment that took twenty years to build. Section 193.155(3) provides that homestead is reassessed at just value on 1 January following a change of ownership, and defines a change of ownership as any sale, foreclosure, or transfer of legal or beneficial title in equity. It then lists exceptions, and the exceptions are where the answers live:

The deed	Reassessed?	Why
Homestead into the owner’s own revocable trust	No, where the owner remains entitled to the exemption	§ 193.155(3)(a)1.b — transfer between legal and equitable title, same person entitled
Adding a spouse to the deed, or a transfer between spouses	No	§ 193.155(3)(a)2 — express spousal exception
Owner adds an adult child as an additional grantee, with the owner named as both grantor and grantee	No — provided the child does not apply for a homestead exemption on the property. A deed to the child alone is a change of ownership and does reset it	§ 193.155(3)(a)1.c
Enhanced life estate deed reserving a life estate	No	Same person remains entitled to the exemption; § 193.155(3)(a)1.b
Outright transfer to a child who then claims homestead	Yes	Change of ownership; new base year at just value

The exemption itself is a related but separate question, governed by sections 196.031 and 196.041. Section 196.041(2) provides that a beneficial interest for life amounts to equitable title to real estate for exemption purposes — which is why a life estate, and a revocable trust in which the owner remains the beneficiary, both preserve the exemption. See also Florida Attorney General Opinion 2005-52. An irrevocable trust preserves it only where the beneficiary holds a beneficial interest for life rather than for a term of years.

And if the transfer is part of a move rather than an estate plan, section 193.155(8) allows the accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to travel. Portability is capped at the lesser of $500,000 or the difference between the just and assessed value of the old homestead, the new homestead has to be established within three years — the owner must have received a homestead exemption as of 1 January of one of the three immediately preceding years — and it has to be claimed on a sworn form filed with the exemption application. It is not automatic, and it is missed constantly.

Homestead exemption administration is handled county by county by the property appraiser, so a marginal case is worth confirming locally rather than assuming.

Which deed does which job: a Florida deed comparison

A note on names before the table, because the search box and the statute book do not agree. A quitclaim deed is also written quit claim deed, and is very commonly typed as a quick claim deed, a quick deed or a quit deed. They all mean the same instrument. The lady bird deed is written ladybird deed just as often, and its formal name is an enhanced life estate deed. Nothing legal turns on which spelling you use — but if you asked a title company for a “quick deed,” this is the row you want.

One more naming point, because it separates two instruments that behave very differently. A life estate deed reserves a life estate for the owner and gives the remainder to someone else, and once it is recorded the owner can no longer sell or mortgage without the remaindermen. An enhanced life estate deed — the lady bird deed — keeps those powers. Both create a life estate; only one of them leaves you in control of your own house. The table below keeps them on separate rows for that reason.

Deed	What it does	Typical use
General warranty deed	Conveys title with full covenants of warranty, including against defects arising before the grantor owned it	Arm’s length sales
Special warranty deed	Warrants only against defects arising during the grantor’s own ownership	Sales by estates, trusts and institutions
Quitclaim deed	Conveys whatever interest the grantor has, with no warranty at all	Transfers between family members, clearing title, adding or removing a name
Enhanced life estate deed, commonly called a lady bird deed	Reserves a life estate with retained power to sell, mortgage and divest the remaindermen, with the remainder passing at death	Passing a home outside probate while keeping full control during life
Life estate deed	Reserves a life estate without the retained power to sell or divest	Rarely the right tool once an enhanced life estate deed is available
Personal representative’s deed	Conveys estate real property under the authority of letters of administration	Selling or distributing a decedent’s Florida real estate
Trustee’s deed	Conveys real property out of a trust, signed by the trustee in that capacity rather than by an individual owner	Selling or distributing property held in a living trust or a Florida land trust
Corrective deed	Re-states an earlier deed to fix an error, conveying no new interest	Misspelled name, wrong legal description, missing witness

Two instruments that sound as though they belong on that list do not. A tax deed is what a county issues to the successful bidder after a tax certificate sale under chapter 197; it is a forced transfer for unpaid property taxes and has nothing to do with a voluntary conveyance. A deed in lieu of foreclosure conveys property to a lender to settle a mortgage debt, which is a negotiated alternative to foreclosure rather than a family or estate-planning transfer. Neither is something we prepare as part of a routine deed transfer.

If you have been looking for a warranty deed attorney because a buyer, a lender or a title agency has asked for a general or special warranty deed rather than a quitclaim, that is a drafting question with real consequences — the covenants are the difference — and it is quoted the same way as everything else on this page, once we have seen the current recorded deed.

Choosing between them is not a stylistic preference. Our note on the types of deeds used in Florida goes through the warranties each one gives, and the page on Florida quit claim deeds covers the instrument most family transfers actually use.

The lady bird deed, and the deed Florida does not have

A transfer on death deed — also called a TOD deed or a beneficiary deed — lets an owner name who receives real property at death, with no probate and no present interest passing during life. Roughly two-thirds of states have adopted some version of it.

Florida is not one of them. There is no transfer on death deed in Florida and no beneficiary deed form to fill in. Florida did not adopt the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act, and chapter 689 contains no transfer-on-death provision. Chapter 711, which people sometimes cite, is the Florida Uniform Transfer-on-Death Security Registration Act — stocks, bonds and brokerage accounts. It is built around a registering entity such as a broker or transfer agent, and there is no registering entity for a parcel of land. Florida does allow beneficiary designations on motor vehicle titles and on bank accounts, which is part of why people reasonably assume real estate works the same way. It does not.

What Florida has instead is the enhanced life estate deed, the lady bird deed. It reaches nearly the same result — the owner keeps full control and the right to sell or mortgage during life, and the property passes at death outside probate — by a different mechanism. For most people arriving here looking for a transfer on death deed, this is the answer they actually wanted.

How to avoid probate on a Florida house

Most people who go looking for a deed are really asking how to avoid probate, and the deed is only one of the four answers. It is worth seeing them together, because the most popular one does not work.

• A will does not avoid probate. This is the one that surprises people. A will is the instruction manual for probate, not a way around it — the estate still opens, the personal representative is still appointed, the house still passes under court supervision. Dying with a will and dying without one change who takes the property, not whether probate happens.
• Survivorship does, for the co-owner who survives. But it only exists on a Florida deed if the instrument expressly says so under § 689.15, it defeats whatever the will said, and it is irrevocable without the other owner’s cooperation.
• A funded revocable trust does — but only for property actually deeded into it. A trust that was signed and never funded leaves the house exactly where it was, which is a failure that stays silent until someone dies.
• An enhanced life estate deed does, for the property it covers, while leaving the owner in full control during life. That is the instrument this section is about.

All four are narrower than the phrase “avoid probate” suggests. None of them reaches assets they do not cover, and a house passing outside probate does not mean the estate has nothing left to administer. Our guide to the Florida probate process covers what the estate still has to do.

Two things are worth knowing before choosing it, and then this page hands off to the pages that cover it properly.

No statute creates it. No Florida statute creates, authorizes or defines an enhanced life estate deed. Chapter 689, which governs conveyances of land, contains no such section, and neither does chapter 732 or chapter 736. Courts recognize the instrument without any statutory authorization — see Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp., 389 So. 3d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023). It is a creature of practice, assembled from ordinary life estate and remainder principles together with a broad reserved power to sell, convey, mortgage and divest the remaindermen. That does not make it unsound. It does mean the drafting carries the entire weight, because there is no statute standing behind a badly drafted one.

The documentary stamp position is favorable, and it is the enhanced powers that earn it. In Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004 (16 October 2020), the Department considered an enhanced life estate deed in which the grantors conveyed to their three daughters as remaindermen while reserving a life estate with broad powers to grant, sell, convey, reconvey, mortgage, encumber and lease, and to divest the remaindermen. The Department advised that no documentary stamp tax was due, because the deed transferred no present beneficial interest and the remainder interests were contingent on the life tenants’ deaths.

Does a mortgage change that? Not on a properly drafted deed

This is the question that comes up most, and the instinct behind it is sound. Section 201.02(1)(a) defines consideration to include the amount of any mortgage whether or not the debt is assumed, and rule 12B-4.014(2)(a) exempts a gift of realty only where the property is unencumbered. Put those together and a mortgaged gift deed looks taxable on the balance — which, on an ordinary gift deed, it is.

But those provisions answer the second question, not the first. The threshold question is whether any present beneficial interest was transferred at all. If nothing presently passes, there is no taxable conveyance and there is no consideration to measure — and the size of the mortgage is then beside the point. The Florida Supreme Court put the principle plainly in Crescent Miami Center, LLC v. Department of Revenue, 903 So. 2d 913 (Fla. 2005): the tax requires both a purchaser and consideration, and a mere change in the form of ownership without an exchange of value is not taxable. The Legislature responded by enacting section 201.0201, which limits that holding to its facts and reaches transfers of beneficial ownership through entity structures — so the decision is good law on a narrower footing than it once had.

That principle does not depend on departmental guidance. The Florida Supreme Court has held that a purchaser for documentary stamp purposes is one who gives an equivalent in money or other value, and that the mortgage figures as consideration only where the economic burden of the debt actually shifts — Florida Department of Revenue v. De Maria, 338 So. 2d 838 (Fla. 1976). Where the grantor keeps every power and can undo the deed tomorrow, nothing shifts.

The Department’s published position is the one set out in Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004, described above: on a deed reserving the full range of powers, no present beneficial interest passes, and the remainder is contingent on the life tenant’s death. The advisement reaches that conclusion without reference to consideration at all, holding the deed outside the tax “regardless of any consideration.”

That is the step that carries the mortgage question. Where a deed is outside the tax because nothing beneficial moved, there is no taxable conveyance for a mortgage balance to be measured against — the encumbrance is simply not the operative fact. Rule 12B-4.013(28)(a) points the same way for the parallel case, exempting a deed to a trustee to the extent of the grantor’s beneficial ownership interest whether or not the property is encumbered. The same reasoning is why deeding a residence into a qualified personal residence trust (QPRT) is analyzed the same way — what matters is whether beneficial ownership actually moved, not whether a mortgage happens to sit on the property.

There is no Florida decision, rule or Department guidance holding that documentary stamp tax is due on an enhanced life estate deed of mortgaged property. That is a real point, and it is also the honest limit of it: the absence of contrary authority is not the same as an advisement on your facts. Which is why the drafting, and the tax analysis, belong in front of you before the deed is signed.

The powers do the tax work, not the label

Calling a deed a lady bird deed does not make it one, and the Department has been explicit that Florida has no blanket exemption for deeds executed for estate-planning purposes. The result depends on what the instrument actually reserves. To keep the analysis above, the deed needs to:

• Retain in the grantor the full power to sell, convey, mortgage, encumber, gift or otherwise dispose of the property, without the remainder beneficiary’s consent;
• Let the grantor keep all proceeds of any such disposition;
• Let the grantor divest or replace the remainder beneficiary at will; and
• Make the remainder interest contingent on the grantor’s death.

Drop those powers and the result flips. An ordinary life estate deed presently transfers a vested remainder to the third party — the remainder vests when the life estate is created (Kach v. Cooley, 201 So. 2d 254 (Fla. 1st DCA 1967)) — and where the property is mortgaged, the outstanding balance is then taxable consideration under section 201.02(1)(a) and rule 12B-4.013(16). Same family of instrument, same property, same mortgage; a five-figure difference in tax, decided entirely by which powers the drafter reserved.

Two honest qualifications. Under section 213.22 a technical assistance advisement binds the Department only as to the taxpayer who requested it and the transaction presented, and rule 12-11.007(1) provides that a taxpayer may not rely on an advisement issued to somebody else. So the advisements above show a consistent departmental position over three decades; they are not a license. And no Florida court has ruled on the documentary stamp treatment of an enhanced life estate deed. On a large mortgage balance — a commercial property, or a substantial residential loan — requesting your own advisement before recording is a cheap way to convert a well-grounded position into a binding one.

This page prepares lady bird deeds at a published flat fee of $675, recording included. If what you are looking for is a lady bird deed attorney — the instrument itself, how it works, what it does and does not protect against, and what it costs by county — that page goes through it in full and is the better starting point.

For the rest — how the instrument compares with a living trust, what it does to your taxes, and whether it can be challenged after you die — see the comparison with a living trust and the tax consequences in detail.

When a deed is already wrong: corrective deeds and scrivener’s errors

Errors in recorded deeds are common and most of them are fixable. What they are not is self-fixing, and the cheap fixes have narrow doors.

The statutory route. Section 689.041 provides a curative procedure for scrivener’s errors, and it is genuinely narrow — narrower than most summaries of it suggest. It reaches a single error in the legal description, in one of only three categories: no more than one lot or block identification of a recorded platted lot; no more than one unit, building or phase identification of a condominium or cooperative unit; or no more than one directional designation or numerical fraction where the land is described as a fractional portion of a section, township or range. A deed with two errors is outside the statute. So is an error in a name, in the consideration, or in the execution.

Four conditions must all be met: record title to the intended property was held by the grantor of the first erroneous deed when it was executed; within the five years before that deed was recorded the grantor held title to no other property in the same subdivision, condominium or cooperative, or in the same section, township and range; the intended property is not described exclusively by a metes and bounds description; and a curative notice is recorded in the county where the property sits. The notice has to follow the statutory form, identify each erroneous deed by book and page, set out the erroneous description, certify each of those conditions, and state the property that was actually meant to be conveyed. It must be sworn and notarized.

Where it works, it works well: the notice corrects the first erroneous deed and every later deed carrying the same error, releases any cloud those deeds put on other property, and relates back to the record date of the first erroneous deed.

The limit that catches most people: section 689.041 does not apply to quitclaim deeds. The statute defines an erroneous deed as any deed other than a quitclaim deed. Since quitclaim deeds are the instrument most family transfers use, the statutory shortcut is unavailable in a large share of the cases where someone wants it.

The ordinary route. Where section 689.041 does not reach, two remedies remain and they are not mutually exclusive: a corrective deed executed by the original grantor or the grantor’s successor, or an equitable action to reform the deed. A court sitting in equity may reform an instrument where a mutual mistake means the writing does not express what the parties actually agreed, and also where one party was mistaken and the other behaved inequitably: Providence Square Association v. Biancardi, 507 So. 2d 1366 (Fla. 1987), and Florida Masters Packing, Inc. v. Craig, 739 So. 2d 1288 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999).

Reformation has two hard edges. It requires the grantor or the grantor’s successors as an indispensable party, which is exactly the problem when the grantor has died: Antonelli v. Smith, 556 So. 2d 1132 (Fla. 3d DCA 1989); Palm v. Taylor, 929 So. 2d 566 (Fla. 2d DCA 2006). And it is unavailable against a bona fide purchaser without notice.

This is the whole thesis of this page stated as authority rather than assertion. A deed error found while everyone is alive and cooperative is an afternoon’s work. The same error found after a death is litigation.

One piece of good news: fixing an error does not mean paying the transfer tax twice. Florida Administrative Code rule 12B-4.014(3) provides that where a deed corrects a technical deficiency in a previous deed in the nature of a scrivener’s error, and the correcting deed conveys no interest in real property, it is not subject to tax; in practice the Department has treated such an instrument as carrying only the minimum tax. Section 201.02(1) requires both a purchaser and consideration before the tax is due, and a deed filed solely to correct an error has neither. If the corrective deed does convey a new or additional interest, or there is new consideration, the full tax applies.

Deed fraud, and the free county alert almost nobody has signed up for

Recording a forged deed is easy. Clerks are recorders, not adjudicators — they check the face of the instrument against section 695.26 and they do not verify that the person who signed was really the owner. Vacant lots, rental properties and the homes of elderly owners living alone are the usual targets.

Two changes to Florida law give owners more to work with than they had a few years ago, and neither is well known.

Free monitoring, in every county. Section 28.47 required every Florida clerk or county recorder to establish a free electronic notification service by 1 July 2024. A person may register at least five monitored identities — names or parcel identification numbers — per email address, and the office must send notice within 24 hours of a recording that matches. It costs nothing. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Orange all run one. If you own Florida real estate and are not registered, that is a five-minute job with a real return.

A faster way to undo it. Section 65.091, effective 1 July 2023, creates a cause of action to quiet title where an attempt was made to fraudulently convey land. Where the court so finds, it must quiet title and restore the plaintiff to the same title and rights held before the conveyance. The action is entitled to the summary procedure of section 51.011, the court is directed to advance the cause on its calendar, and the clerk must make a simplified form available. The remedy is cumulative to whatever else the owner has.

The Florida Supreme Court responded to section 65.091 by adding Form 1.925 to the Rules of Civil Procedure, a standardized complaint for exactly this action, and the remedy is expressly cumulative — it sits alongside a common law quiet title action, a civil fraud claim and a criminal referral rather than replacing any of them.

A forged deed is void, not merely voidable, and conveys nothing even to an innocent purchaser — but the cloud it puts on the title is real and does not clear itself. If a deed has appeared in the records that you did not sign, our page on contesting a Florida deed covers what happens next, and where the signature came from an elderly or vulnerable owner, undue influence is frequently the better framing.

Buying as a foreign national: the affidavit Florida now requires

Since 2023 Florida has restricted the purchase of real property by certain foreign principals, and the compliance step lands on the deed side of the transaction rather than the contract side.

Section 692.203 requires the buyer, at closing, to provide an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury attesting that the buyer is not a foreign principal prohibited from purchasing the property and is in compliance with the section. Foreign principals who own qualifying property must register with the Department of Commerce — within 30 days of acquisition for property acquired on or after 1 July 2023. The penalties are not nominal: $1,000 per day for late registration, a second-degree misdemeanor for violating the purchase restrictions or knowingly selling in violation, and forfeiture of the property to the state.

The provision reaches ordinary residential purchases, not only large commercial ones, and it applies to buyers who have lived in Florida for years. In a South Florida practice this comes up constantly, and it comes up in Spanish as often as in English. If you are buying or receiving Florida real property and are not a United States citizen or permanent resident, this needs to be looked at before closing rather than discovered at it.

Deeds that come out of an estate

When a Florida property owner dies, the deed that moves the property is usually a personal representative deed — strictly, a personal representative’s deed — signed under the authority of letters of administration issued by the probate court. It cannot be signed until someone holds that authority, which is the step families most often try to skip.

Two situations come up constantly. Where the owner lived in another state and owned Florida real estate — the snowbird case — the Florida authority comes through ancillary probate, sometimes called ancillary administration. Where the estate is modest enough to qualify, summary administration replaces the whole appointment step: under section 735.206 the court’s order assigns the estate’s assets to the people entitled to them, and where real property is involved the order is recorded and operates in place of a deed. Homestead is the exception. A separate petition to determine homestead status is normally required, and it is that order rather than the summary administration order that establishes the heirs’ rights in the homestead — which is one reason some title insurers prefer formal administration where real estate is involved. Our guides to the Florida probate process and ancillary probate for non-residents cover the sequence, becoming personal representative covers the appointment, and selling a house during probate covers the sale itself.

Where the property was already held in a trust rather than in the owner’s own name, none of that applies. No probate authority is needed and the instrument is a trustee deed — a trustee’s deed — signed by the trustee or successor trustee in that capacity.

What is a certification of trust, and why the title agent wants one

A certification of trust is a short sworn document confirming that the trust exists, who the current trustee is, and that the trustee holds the power to convey the property. Section 736.1017 of the Florida Trust Code authorizes a trustee to furnish one to anyone other than a beneficiary instead of the full trust instrument, and sets out what it has to contain — the date of execution, the settlor, the acting trustee and address, the trustee’s powers, whether the trust is revocable, the authority of co-trustees, and how title to trust property is taken. It is what a buyer, lender or title agent will normally ask for when a trustee’s deed is signed.

The reason it exists is privacy. Handing over the entire trust instrument would disclose the beneficiaries, the dispositive terms and the size of the estate to a stranger to the transaction, none of which the title agent needs. Section 736.1017(4) expressly provides that the certification need not contain the dispositive terms. It answers the only question the title agent is entitled to ask — can this person sign — without disclosing the rest, and a person who acts in reliance on it without knowing the representations are wrong is protected.

Which raises the question people ask before any of that: can you put your house in a trust without a lawyer? Nothing stops you from signing and recording a deed into your own trust. What catches people is that the deed into the trust is a lifetime alienation of homestead like any other, so a married owner still needs the spouse to join — and a trust that was funded with a void deed did not get funded at all. That failure is silent, and it surfaces after death, when it can no longer be fixed.

Where the deceased owner co-owned the property, the vesting question from earlier on this page decides whether any of this is necessary at all. Survivorship property does not pass through the estate. Tenancy-in-common property does.

Where a Florida deed is recorded

Deeds are recorded in the official records of the county where the property sits. In most counties that is the clerk of the circuit court. There is one well-known exception, and it catches people every year.

The county decides the office, never the instrument. A quit claim deed for property in Palm Beach County is recorded with the Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller. A Broward County quit claim deed goes to the county’s Records, Taxes and Treasury Division rather than to a clerk at all. A Duval County quit claim deed is recorded with the Clerk of the Circuit and County Courts in Jacksonville, and an Orange County quit claim deed with the Orange County Comptroller. Polk, Lee, Pasco, Volusia, Marion, Pinellas and Hillsborough all record through their clerk of the circuit court. The deed itself is drafted the same way whichever county it is bound for.

County	Recording office	Notes
Miami-Dade	Clerk of the Court and Comptroller	60-cent documentary stamp rate; no surtax on a single-family residence. E-recording usually one to three business days
Broward	Records, Taxes and Treasury Division	Recording is handled by the county rather than by the clerk’s office
Palm Beach	Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller	Publishes its full fee schedule online
Orange	Orange County Comptroller	Not the clerk. E-recordings often processed within a day; documents mailed in normally take seven to ten business days
Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Volusia	Clerk of the Circuit Court	Central Florida; e-recording available
Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco	Clerk of the Circuit Court	Tampa Bay
Duval	Clerk of the Circuit and County Courts	Jacksonville
Lee, Collier, Sarasota, Charlotte	Clerk of the Circuit Court	Southwest Florida

Electronic recording is permitted but not compulsory. Section 695.27 is permissive: a county recorder may accept electronic documents, must continue accepting paper, and must index both in the same series. Electronic is faster. It is not better, and some document types cannot be e-recorded anywhere.

If what you need is a copy of your own recorded deed rather than a new one, every office in that table lets you search its official records by owner name and download the instrument, and a certified copy is $2.00 plus $1.00 per page. That is the document to send us — not the property appraiser’s page, which is an index rather than an instrument.

The same search answers a different question people ask constantly: how to find out who owns a house. The official records are public, they are searchable by name and by address in every Florida county, and the most recently recorded deed is the answer. What the records will not tell you is whether that deed was any good — which is the subject of everything above.

Lorenzo Law prepares deeds for property across Florida — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach in the south; Orange, Osceola and Seminole County including Altamonte Springs and Lake Mary in central Florida; and Hillsborough, Pinellas, Duval, Lee, Collier and Sarasota elsewhere in the state. We work in English and Spanish.

What is needed to prepare a Florida deed

Item	Why it is needed
A copy of the current recorded deed	Supplies the legal description and confirms how title is presently held
Full legal names of everyone giving and receiving the interest	Section 695.26(1) requires names printed beneath signatures, and grantee names and addresses
Post office addresses for every party and every witness	Required on the face of the deed since 1 January 2024
Marital status of every person conveying	Determines whether spousal joinder is constitutionally required
Whether the property is homestead	Drives the joinder question, the exemption question and part of the tax analysis
Whether there is a mortgage, and its approximate balance	Determines documentary stamp tax and raises the due-on-sale question
How the new owners intend to hold title	Survivorship must be express or section 689.15 makes it a tenancy in common
The parcel identification number and the county	Determines where it records and confirms the description
What the transfer is meant to accomplish	Decides which of the instruments above is the right one

What changed in 2023 and 2024

If you are working from a form, a template or a set of instructions written before 2023, three things have moved underneath it:

• Post office addresses on the face of the deed. Chapter 2023-238 added the address requirements in section 695.26(1) for each executing party, each witness and each grantee, effective 1 January 2024. This is the change that gets deeds rejected at the counter.
• A statutory quitclaim deed form. Section 689.025, added by the same chapter effective 1 July 2023, sets out model quitclaim language and requires a blank space for the parcel identification number.
• Free fraud monitoring in every county. Section 28.47 required every clerk to have a free notification service running by 1 July 2024.

One item that has gone the other way: the Lee County pilot program requiring photo identification to record an instrument, formerly section 28.2225, has been repealed.

Talk to a Florida deed attorney

If you are weighing whether to prepare a deed yourself, the useful question is not whether you are permitted to. It is whether your transfer involves homestead, a spouse, a mortgage, a child, a trust or a death — because those are the facts that turn a one-page document into a problem that surfaces years later, usually in front of someone who is trying to sell the house.

To have a Florida deed prepared, or to have one reviewed before you sign it, call (305) 224-6811 or send the current recorded deed. The first conversation is a free consultation: you will be told which instrument the transfer needs, what the documentary stamp tax will be, and what the flat fee is, before any work starts. Hablamos español.

Looking for a deed attorney near you

Searches for a deed attorney near me, a deed transfer attorney near me, a quitclaim deed lawyer near me or deed preparation near me assume the work is local. For a deed, it mostly is not — and that is worth knowing before you narrow your search to your own ZIP code.

A deed is recorded in the county where the land sits, not where the lawyer sits, and a Florida lawyer is admitted to practice throughout the state. So the county your property is in does not limit who may prepare the instrument. Between remote online notarization under sections 117.201 to 117.265 and county e-recording, a transfer can be handled start to finish without anyone traveling. Deeds are prepared here for property anywhere in Florida, not only in Miami-Dade and Broward. If you have been searching for property deed lawyers near me and getting results three counties away, that is a search engine guessing at geography the work does not actually depend on. For a county this page does not name, the answer is still yes.

Who you will actually be working with

Lorenzo Law is a solo practice. The attorney who takes your first call is the one who reads the recorded deed, runs the homestead analysis, drafts the instrument and answers the phone when you call in three years because a title company has a question. There is no file handoff, because there is nobody to hand it to.

That is a real difference in this particular kind of work, and it is worth being concrete about why. A deed prepared in a sale has a transaction around it — a contract, a lender, a closing date, and somebody whose job is to get to the closing table. A deed prepared outside a sale has none of that. Nobody is assigned to ask whether the deed you asked for is the deed you actually need, which is exactly why the wrong instrument gets drafted perfectly, recorded cleanly, and fails a decade later in front of a family that has no idea why.

Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar No. 107002. Offices in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale; deeds prepared statewide.

Whether you need a deed transfer attorney for a family transfer, a quit claim deed attorney for a divorce, or a deed lawyer to look at an instrument somebody else drafted — call (305) 224-6811.

Frequently asked questions about Florida deed preparation

Do I need a lawyer to add a name to a deed in Florida?

No. Florida does not require a lawyer to prepare a deed. The decision that actually matters is not who drafts it but how the two of you will hold title, because section 689.15 makes tenancy in common the default — so a child added to a parent’s deed does not automatically take the house when the parent dies unless the deed says so expressly.

Do you need a lawyer to remove a name from a deed?

No, and the deed is the easy part. Removing someone from the deed does nothing to remove them from the mortgage. If the transfer is happening because of a divorce or a separation, the loan has to be dealt with separately, usually by refinance or assumption.

Can I transfer a deed without an attorney?

Yes. Section 454.18 provides that any person may conduct his or her own cause. The risk is not that the transfer is prohibited — it is that a defective deed does not announce itself, and the person who could have fixed it may not be available when it surfaces.

How much does it cost to have a deed prepared in Florida?

Our fees are flat and published: $575 for a quitclaim deed and $675 for a lady bird deed, each covering the title review, the homestead and spousal joinder analysis, the documentary stamp analysis, drafting, the signing — including remote online notarization if you are signing from out of state — and the cost of recording — the clerk’s charges under section 28.24 and the nominal stamp an instrument must carry to be accepted. Online services and high-volume flat-fee shops advertise around $350, usually with recording and remote notarization billed on top and without any of the analysis. Documentary stamp tax assessed on consideration is separate. It is a tax on the transfer rather than a cost of recording, section 201.02(1)(a) imposes it on the parties to the instrument, and it is not absorbed into any fee. Whether it arises depends on the deed: a transfer that conveys no present beneficial interest generally attracts none, while a deed that presently conveys an interest in mortgaged property is generally taxable on the outstanding balance at 70 cents per $100, 60 cents in Miami-Dade. We calculate it before anything is signed. Fees quoted here are for standard matters and are confirmed in writing after we review the current recorded deed.

How much does a lawyer charge to transfer a deed in Florida?

Here, $575 for a quitclaim deed and $675 for a lady bird deed, flat, with the county recording charges included. Documentary stamp tax on consideration is separate, is a liability of the parties under section 201.02(1)(a), and is calculated and quoted before anything is signed.

How much does a quitclaim deed cost in Florida?

Our flat fee for a quitclaim deed is $575, and it includes the cost of recording. That covers the title review, the homestead and spousal joinder analysis, the documentary stamp analysis, drafting, execution, and the clerk’s charges under section 28.24 — $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each page after, $1.00 for every name past the fourth — together with the nominal stamp an instrument has to carry before the clerk will accept it. Documentary stamp tax assessed on consideration is not included, because it is a tax on the transfer rather than a cost of recording, and section 201.02(1)(a) imposes it on the persons who make, sign, issue or accept the instrument. A quitclaim between family members for no consideration on unencumbered property generally attracts only the minimum tax. A quitclaim of property that carries a mortgage is generally taxable on the outstanding balance at 70 cents per $100 or portion of $100, 60 cents in Miami-Dade. We calculate it before anything is signed.

How much does it cost to transfer a deed in Florida?

Three separate things make up the total, and it is worth keeping them apart because only the first is a legal fee.

• Preparation. Our flat fee is $575 for a quitclaim deed and $675 for a lady bird deed. Online form services advertise around $350, usually with recording and remote notarization billed on top and without any of the analysis.
• Recording. Set by section 28.24(13) and identical in every county: $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each additional page, $1.00 for every name beyond the fourth. A two-page deed with four names records for $18.50. This is inside our fee.
• Documentary stamp tax. Owed on consideration, and the parties’ liability rather than the lawyer’s. No quoted legal fee should be read as absorbing it.

Two worked examples. A parent quitclaims an unmortgaged Florida home to a child: two pages, three names. The clerk’s charge is $18.50 and the tax is the minimum, both of which sit inside the $575, so $575 is what the transfer costs. The same deed on a property carrying a $200,000 mortgage balance: the fee is still $575, but documentary stamp tax of $1,400 is due on the transfer and is owed by the parties, not by us. That second figure is the one that catches people out, and it is why we run the calculation before anyone signs.

Do I need a deed attorney near me?

No — and the same answer covers anyone searching for a quitclaim deed attorney near me. A deed is recorded in the county where the land sits, not where the lawyer sits, and a Florida lawyer is admitted to practice throughout the state, so a deed attorney in Miami can prepare an instrument for property in Duval, Orange, Lee or Escambia County exactly as readily as for one in Miami-Dade. Signing does not require travel either: remote online notarization has been available in Florida since 2020 under sections 117.201 to 117.265, and every Florida clerk accepts e-recording. What matters far more than the office’s distance from the property is whether whoever drafts the deed asks about homestead, marital status, the mortgage and how title is to be held — because those are the facts that decide whether the deed works. The first conversation is a free consultation.

What are the recording fees for a deed in Florida?

They are set by section 28.24(13) and are the same in every county: $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each additional page, and $1.00 for every name beyond the fourth on the instrument. A two-page deed with four names records for $18.50. Certification is $2.00 and copies are $1.00 a page. Documentary stamp tax is separate and is not part of the recording charge.

How long does it take to prepare and record a Florida deed?

A standard deed takes a day or two to draft once we have the recorded deed and the answers on marital status, homestead and the mortgage. Signing can happen the same day, in person or remotely. Recording is the county’s part: e-recording usually takes one to three business days, Orange County frequently turns it around within a day, and paper sent by mail can take seven to ten business days. A week from start to recorded instrument is a reasonable expectation for an uncomplicated transfer.

Can I prepare my own deed in Florida?

Yes. Preparing a deed to your own property is not the unlicensed practice of law — section 454.18 confirms that a person may conduct his or her own cause whether or not they are a lawyer. The risk is not permission, it is accuracy. A deed that fails the two-witness requirement in section 689.01, omits what section 695.26 requires on its face, misses a constitutionally required spousal joinder, or leaves out express survivorship language under section 689.15 may not do what you intended — and the problem usually surfaces years later when someone tries to sell or settle an estate.

Can I prepare my own quit claim deed in Florida?

The same answer applies — you may — with one extra warning specific to this instrument. A quitclaim deed conveys whatever interest the grantor happens to have and gives no warranty of any kind, so if the grantor’s interest turns out to be defective the grantee has no recourse against them. Quitclaim deeds are also the instrument the statutory scrivener’s-error cure in section 689.041 expressly does not reach, so an error in one is harder to fix later than an error in a warranty deed.

Can a title company prepare a deed in Florida?

Deeds are routinely prepared through title agencies in connection with closings, with a Florida lawyer responsible for the work. The question that matters is not what the entity is called but whether a lawyer stands behind the document. There is also a scope point: a title agency is engaged to insure the transaction in front of it, not to tell you that the transfer will cost your children a stepped-up basis or create a Medicaid transfer penalty.

Can a notary prepare a deed in Florida?

A notary takes the acknowledgment. A Florida notary who is not a lawyer and who decides what the deed should say, which form to use or how title should be held is doing something chapter 454 addresses. There are two further restrictions people trip over: under section 117.107(11) a notary may not notarize for a spouse, son, daughter, mother or father, and under section 117.107(12) may not notarize an instrument in which the notary is a party or has a financial interest.

Can a real estate agent prepare a deed in Florida?

No. A licensee may complete approved contract forms in a transaction they are handling. Drafting the conveyance is preparing a legal document for another person, which is a different thing, and most brokerages prohibit it internally.

Who is allowed to prepare a deed for someone else in Florida?

Section 454.23 makes it a felony of the third degree for a person not licensed to practice law in Florida to practice law in this state. Chapter 454 does not itself define the practice of law; that definition comes from the Supreme Court of Florida under article V, section 15 of the constitution. From a property owner’s side the practical concern is different: where a notary, form vendor or agent prepares a deed and it turns out to be defective, there is no professional responsible for correcting it.

What is the difference between a grantor and a grantee?

The grantor is the current owner giving the property away, and is the only person who signs the deed. The grantee is the person receiving it, and does not sign — but must have a name and post office address on the face of the instrument under section 695.26(1).

Does the grantee own the property once the deed is signed?

Once the deed is signed, delivered and accepted, the grantee owns whatever interest the deed conveyed. On a quitclaim deed that is whatever the grantor actually had, with no warranty that it was anything. What happens at the first death depends on how the deed had the owners take title.

Is a deed the same as a title?

No. The deed is the document; the title is the ownership the document moves. You sign a deed and you hold title. Losing the paper does not lose the house — the recorded instrument stays in the county’s official records permanently.

What is a step-up in basis, and why does it matter on a deed?

What is a step up in basis? Property inherited at death takes a basis equal to its value on the date of death under Internal Revenue Code section 1014. Property given away during life carries the giver’s original basis over under section 1015. On a house bought in 1988 for $60,000 and worth $600,000 today, that difference decides whether the child pays capital gains on $540,000 of appreciation or on almost none of it. A quitclaim deed adding the child now gives up the step-up. A properly drafted enhanced life estate deed keeps it, because the retained powers include the property in the grantor’s estate under section 2036.

What is the difference between a quitclaim deed and a lady bird deed?

A quitclaim deed transfers an interest now. A lady bird deed transfers nothing until death while reserving the power to sell, mortgage or change your mind. On the same house and the same child, the quitclaim gives up the stepped-up basis, is generally taxable on any mortgage balance, is a completed gift for Form 709 purposes, exposes the property to the child’s creditors, and cannot be undone without the child’s signature. The lady bird deed does none of those things. See the comparison table above.

How do I avoid probate on a Florida house?

Four things do it, and a will is not one of them — a will is the instruction manual for probate, not a way around it. What works on a house is express survivorship language on the deed under section 689.15, a revocable trust the property was actually deeded into, or an enhanced life estate deed. Each covers only the property it reaches, and a house passing outside probate does not mean the estate has nothing left to administer.

Does a will avoid probate?

No. A will directs how the estate is distributed; it does not keep the estate out of court. The probate proceeding still opens, a personal representative is still appointed, and the house still passes under court supervision. Dying with a will changes who takes the property, not whether probate happens.

What is a legal description, and is the parcel number the same thing?

The legal description is the language that identifies the land the deed conveys — either a lot and block in a recorded plat, or a metes and bounds description that walks the boundary and closes back where it started. The parcel identification or folio number is not a legal description and cannot substitute for one: it is the property appraiser’s filing reference. Florida courts ask whether a surveyor could locate the land from the description, and a patently ambiguous one is void.

What is a quiet title action, and how long does it take?

A quiet title action asks a court to declare who owns the property and to clear a competing claim or a defective instrument off the record. It is what a forged deed usually requires, because a forged deed conveys nothing but the cloud it leaves does not clear itself. Since 1 July 2023, section 65.091 has given owners a specific cause of action where an attempt was made to fraudulently convey land, with the summary procedure of section 51.011 and a direction that the court advance the case on its calendar. How long any particular action takes depends on how many parties have to be served and whether anyone contests it, which is a question to ask about your own facts rather than in general.

Will a new deed cost me my Florida homestead exemption?

Usually not, if the deed is drafted with that in mind. Section 193.155(3) reassesses homestead at just value on a change of ownership, but the exceptions cover a transfer into your own revocable trust where you remain entitled to the exemption, transfers between spouses, adding a grantee while keeping your own interest provided that person does not claim homestead, and an enhanced life estate deed reserving a life estate. This is the part of Florida homestead law that deals with property taxes. It is separate from the constitutional homestead protections that require your spouse to join a deed, and separate again from the homestead protection against creditors — one word, three different jobs.

Does a deed have to be notarized in Florida to be valid?

No, and this is the most commonly misstated rule in the area. Section 689.01 requires a writing signed by the grantor in the presence of two subscribing witnesses, and says nothing about notarization. Acknowledgment before a notary or other authorized officer is what section 695.03 requires to make a deed recordable. An unrecorded deed can still pass title between the parties — Sweat v. Yates, 463 So. 2d 306 (Fla. 1st DCA 1984) — though leaving one unrecorded is a serious practical risk.

How many witnesses does a Florida deed need?

Two. Section 689.01(1) requires the grantor to sign in the presence of two subscribing witnesses for any conveyance of a freehold interest or an interest for more than one year. Leases are excepted. Note that the statute does not require the two witnesses to sign in each other’s presence — that rule applies to the execution of wills under section 732.502 and is often imported into deed guidance by mistake.

Can the notary be one of the two witnesses?

Yes. Florida law does not prevent a notary from also acting as a witness — Walker v. City of Jacksonville, 360 So. 2d 52 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978). But the notary has to sign on a witness line to count as a witness. Taking the acknowledgment is not the same act, and a deed with one witness signature and a notary block has one witness, not two.

Can a family member or the person receiving the property witness the deed?

Florida imposes no general disinterest requirement on deed witnesses, and interested witnesses have been upheld. But the Second District has said a grantee may not generally sign as a witness to a deed — George Anderson Training & Consulting v. Miller Bey Paralegal & Financial, 313 So. 3d 214 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021). And while section 732.504(2) protects a will from being invalidated by an interested witness, there is no equivalent statute for deeds. Use two witnesses who take nothing under the deed.

Does signing remotely cost extra?

Not here. The remote online notarization and the remote witnessing are inside the flat fee — $575 for a quitclaim deed, $675 for a lady bird deed — along with the county recording charges. Some firms quote the remote session separately at up to $250, and online form services generally bill it on top of the advertised price. The only thing that sits outside the fee is documentary stamp tax assessed on consideration, which is a tax on the transfer rather than a cost of the service and is imposed on the parties by section 201.02(1)(a).

Can I use a remote notary in Florida to sign a deed?

Yes. A Florida online notary who is physically located in Florida may notarize regardless of where you are — sections 117.209(3) and 117.265(1). You do not have to be in Florida, or in the United States. Two conditions attach: if you are outside Florida, section 117.265(3) requires the notary to confirm that you want a Florida notary and Florida law to govern, and identity has to be established under section 117.265(4) by personal knowledge or by credential analysis with identity proofing.

Does remote online notarization cover the witnesses too?

No, and this is the most common way a remote deed signing fails. Remote online notarization under part II of chapter 117 governs the notarial act. The two subscribing witnesses are a separate requirement under section 689.01(2), which allows them to be present and to sign electronically by audio-video communication technology. Both mechanisms have to be arranged together. A session that produces a valid online notarization but only one witness has not produced a valid deed.

What is the difference between an online notary service and having a lawyer prepare the deed?

An online notary service notarizes the document you upload. It confirms who signed. It does not read the mortgage, check whether the property is homestead, determine whether your spouse must join under article X, section 4(c), or tell you the instrument is the wrong one — deciding what the deed should say is the practice of law, and a notary who does it is doing something chapter 454 addresses. Where a lawyer prepares the deed, the remote session is the final step rather than the whole service.

Is an electronic notary the same as a remote online notary in Florida?

In ordinary use, yes. Florida commissions online notaries under part II of chapter 117 to perform remote online notarization by audio-video technology, and electronic notary Florida, remote notary and RON notary are all ways of describing the same commission. What matters for a deed is not the label but whether the notarial certificate satisfies section 117.05(4) and whether the two subscribing witnesses were handled under section 689.01(2).

Can a Florida deed be signed remotely if I live out of state?

Yes, and both halves are covered. Section 689.01(2) allows the two subscribing witnesses to be present and to sign electronically by audio-video communication technology. And under sections 117.209(3) and 117.265(1), a Florida online notary who is physically in Florida may notarize regardless of where you are — you do not have to be in Florida, or in the United States. If you are outside Florida, section 117.265(3) requires the notary to confirm that you want a Florida notary and Florida law to govern. For a signer outside the country, section 117.201(6) allows a foreign passport as identification.

Does my spouse have to sign if the house is only in my name?

If the property is your homestead, yes. Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution provides that the owner of homestead real estate, joined by the spouse if married, may alienate it by mortgage, sale or gift. The trigger is being married, not whose name appears on the title. And the consequence of getting it wrong is severe: a homestead deed signed without the spouse joining is void from the outset, not merely challengeable.

What happens if a homestead deed is signed without the spouse joining?

It is void ab initio — Mendia v. Galvez, 418 So. 3d 838 (Fla. 3d DCA 2025); Nordman v. McCormick, 715 So. 2d 310 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998); Chapman v. Chapman, 526 So. 2d 131 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988). A void deed conveys nothing, cannot be ratified, is not cured by five years under section 95.231, and is not saved by a purchaser who bought in good faith. The property never left the owner. The only fix is a new deed with proper joinder, which is only possible while the owner is alive and competent.

Do minor children stop me from selling or mortgaging my Florida homestead?

No, and this is widely stated incorrectly. Article X, section 4(c) contains two separate restrictions. The restriction on devise is triggered by a surviving spouse or a minor child. The restriction on alienation during life — mortgage, sale or gift — requires only the spouse to join and does not mention minor children at all.

Can a power of attorney sign a deed in Florida?

It can, if it was drafted for the job. Section 689.111 permits a deed or mortgage of homestead to be executed by an attorney in fact where the power of attorney was executed with the same formalities as a deed — but it does not dispense with the constitutional joinder requirement, it only allows the joinder to be accomplished through the power. Separately, section 709.2202(1) requires that authority to create or change rights of survivorship, or to create or change a beneficiary designation, or to make a gift, be specifically enumerated and separately signed or initialed by the principal. And under section 709.2202(6), a power of attorney signed by a Florida-domiciled principal that was witnessed remotely cannot grant those particular authorities at all.

What happens to a jointly owned Florida property when one owner dies?

It depends entirely on what the deed says, and Florida’s default is the opposite of what most people expect. Section 689.15 abolished the right of survivorship in joint tenancies except where the instrument expressly provides for it. So two names on a deed with no survivorship language is a tenancy in common: the deceased owner’s share passes through their estate, and probate happens. A married couple is the exception — a conveyance to a husband and wife is presumed to create a tenancy by the entireties, and the survivor takes the whole.

What is the difference between joint tenants with right of survivorship and tenants in common?

Joint tenants with right of survivorship means the survivor takes the whole and nothing passes through the deceased owner’s estate. Tenants in common means each share passes under that owner’s will, which means probate. In Florida, section 689.15 makes tenants in common the default unless the deed expressly provides for survivorship.

If I add my child to the deed, do they automatically get the house when I die?

Only if the deed says so. Without express survivorship language, section 689.15 makes you and your child tenants in common, your half goes through your estate, and the probate you were trying to avoid happens anyway — now to a half interest in a house your child already owns the other half of. Adding a child also gives them a carryover basis under Internal Revenue Code section 1015 rather than a stepped-up basis, exposes the property to their creditors and divorce, and may create a Medicaid transfer issue. An enhanced life estate deed usually achieves the intended result without any of that.

Do I owe tax if I add my child to my deed?

Often yes, and it surprises people. Section 201.02(1)(a) taxes deeds at 70 cents per $100 of consideration and defines consideration to include the amount of any mortgage or encumbrance, whether or not the debt is assumed. So transferring a mortgaged home to a child who was not already liable on that debt produces documentary stamp tax on the outstanding balance. The qualification: the tax turns on a genuine shifting of economic burden — Abramson v. Straughn, 348 So. 2d 1172 (Fla. 4th DCA 1977) — so where the child was already fully liable on the same mortgage, no new consideration passes. Homestead transfers between spouses where the only consideration is an existing mortgage are exempt under section 201.02(7)(b), but that exemption is spousal only.

Does adding my child to my deed affect capital gains?

Yes, and this is usually the largest cost in the transaction. Property received as a lifetime gift carries the giver’s basis over under section 1015. Property received from a decedent takes a basis equal to date-of-death value under section 1014. So a child added to a deed today takes your original cost as their basis in that share, and pays capital gains measured from it. The same house passing at your death would have come to them at current value with very little gain on an immediate sale.

Do I have to file a gift tax return for a deed?

Possibly. For 2026 the annual exclusion is $19,000 per recipient and the lifetime exclusion is $15 million, so very few families owe tax — but a filing obligation is a different question from a tax liability. Two points are usually stated wrong: the annual exclusion does not shelter a gift of a remainder interest, because a remainder is a future interest under section 2503(b); and an enhanced life estate deed is not a completed gift at all, because the grantor keeps an unrestricted power to divest, so no Form 709 is required when it is signed.

Does deeding my house to my child affect Medicaid eligibility?

An outright transfer for less than fair market value inside Florida’s 60-month look-back can create a penalty period, calculated by dividing the uncompensated value by the average monthly private-pay nursing facility rate. An enhanced life estate deed is generally treated differently in Florida practice, on the reasoning that nothing presently passes while the grantor retains the power to sell and divest — though that treatment is not spelled out in the regulations. Separately, Florida’s estate recovery under section 409.9101 reaches the probate estate only, so property passing outside probate is outside its reach as the statute currently stands.

Does a quitclaim deed remove me from the mortgage?

No. A deed changes who owns the property. The note is a separate contract with the lender, who was not a party to your deed and is not bound by it. People sign a house over in a divorce and remain personally liable on the loan for years. Getting off the loan requires a refinance in the new owner’s name, a formal assumption, or a release the lender is under no obligation to grant.

What is a due-on-sale clause, and does the Garn-St Germain Act protect my transfer?

A due-on-sale clause lets the lender call the loan if the property is transferred without consent. The Garn-St Germain Act, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), creates a federal exception for a specific list of transfers. The list is narrower than most people assume, and whether a particular deed falls inside it should be settled before signing rather than after.

Will transferring my house trigger the due-on-sale clause?

Most family transfers are protected. The Garn-St Germain Act, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from calling a loan secured by residential property of fewer than five dwelling units on a list of transfers that includes a transfer to the borrower’s spouse or children, a transfer resulting from a dissolution of marriage, a transfer to a relative on the borrower’s death, and a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower remains a beneficiary and which does not transfer occupancy rights. Transfers to a sibling, a friend, an LLC, or a trust the borrower is not a beneficiary of are not on that list.

Will a new deed reset my homestead exemption or my Save Our Homes cap?

Not in most of the situations people worry about. Section 193.155(3) reassesses at just value on a change of ownership, but its exceptions cover a transfer into your own revocable trust where you remain entitled to the exemption, transfers between spouses, and — under section 193.155(3)(a)1.c — adding additional grantees on a deed that names you as both grantor and grantee, provided the additional grantee does not apply for a homestead exemption on the property. That structure matters: a deed to the child alone, without you named as a grantee, is a change of ownership and does reset the cap. An outright transfer to a child who then claims homestead does reset it. If you are moving rather than restructuring, section 193.155(8) lets you carry up to $500,000 of accumulated benefit to a new Florida homestead within three years, on a sworn form filed with the exemption application.

Can I deed my Florida house into a trust?

Yes, with two cautions. If the property is homestead and you are married, the deed into the trust is an alienation and your spouse must join — a trust deed is not an exception to article X, section 4(c). And section 196.041(2) provides that a beneficial interest for life is equitable title for homestead exemption purposes, so a revocable trust in which you remain the beneficiary preserves the exemption. An irrevocable trust preserves it only where the beneficiary holds a beneficial interest for life, not for a term of years.

What happens if a deed is never recorded?

It can still be perfectly valid between the grantor and the grantee — Sweat v. Yates is clear that recording is not essential to validity as between the parties. What it is not is protected. Under section 695.01(1) an unrecorded conveyance is not good against creditors or a subsequent purchaser for valuable consideration without notice, and recording is what charges later purchasers with constructive notice: B.A. Mortgage, LLC v. Baigorria, 300 So. 3d 198 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). So the deed in the drawer may be valid and simultaneously worthless against someone who bought from the same owner and recorded.

What is a corrective deed, and when do I need one?

A corrective deed restates an earlier deed to fix an error — a misspelled name, a wrong legal description, a missing witness — without conveying any new interest. Because nothing new is conveyed, it does not attract the transfer tax a second time: Florida Administrative Code rule 12B-4.014(3). For a single legal-description error of certain narrow kinds there is a cheaper statutory route under section 689.041, a recorded curative notice that relates back to the original recording — but it reaches only one error, it does not reach land described exclusively by metes and bounds, it has a five-year condition attached, and it expressly does not apply to quitclaim deeds. Where neither route is available and the original grantor will not or cannot sign, the remedy is an equitable action to reform the deed.

How do I protect my Florida property from deed fraud?

Register for your county’s free property fraud alert. Section 28.47 required every Florida clerk or recorder to have one running by 1 July 2024; you may register at least five names or parcel numbers per email address, and the office must notify you within 24 hours of a matching recording. If a forged deed does appear, section 65.091 gives you an action to quiet title with the benefit of summary procedure, and the court is directed to advance the case on its calendar.

Is documentary stamp tax due on a lady bird deed if the property has a mortgage?

Generally not, on a properly drafted one — and the reason is worth understanding, because it is the drafting rather than the label that produces the result. The threshold question under section 201.02(1)(a) is whether any present beneficial interest was transferred at all. Where the grantor keeps the full power to sell, mortgage, encumber or gift the property, keeps the proceeds, and can divest the remainder beneficiary at will, nothing presently passes, and there is no taxable conveyance for the mortgage balance to be measured against. The Department reached that conclusion in Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004 (16 October 2020), holding an enhanced life estate deed with full reserved powers outside the tax regardless of any consideration; rule 12B-4.013(28)(a) points the same way for a deed to a trustee, to the extent of the grantor’s beneficial ownership, whether or not the property is encumbered. No Florida decision or rule holds otherwise. Two qualifications matter. An advisement binds the Department only as to the taxpayer who requested it, so this is a well-supported position rather than a guarantee for any particular transfer. And an ordinary life estate deed vesting a remainder in a third party is taxable on the mortgage balance — the enhanced powers are doing the work.

Does Florida have a transfer on death deed?

No. Florida did not adopt the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act, and there is no transfer-on-death deed for real estate in chapter 689. Chapter 711 has a similar name but governs transfer-on-death registration of securities and requires a registering entity such as a broker, which does not exist for land. The enhanced life estate deed is what Florida practitioners use to accomplish something similar.

Do I need a lawyer for a lady bird deed?

Florida law does not require one. It is worth knowing what you are taking on. No Florida statute creates the enhanced life estate deed, so the instrument depends entirely on how the reserved powers and the remainder are drafted — and those same reserved powers are what make it an incomplete gift, keep the property in your estate for basis purposes, and support the Medicaid treatment it is chosen for. If the property is homestead and you are married, article X, section 4(c) requires your spouse to join. If the property is mortgaged, the documentary stamp treatment is not settled.

Does a foreign buyer have to sign an affidavit to take title to Florida property?

Section 692.203 requires a buyer to provide an affidavit at closing, signed under penalty of perjury, attesting that the buyer is not a foreign principal prohibited from purchasing the property and is in compliance with the section. Foreign principals who own qualifying property must also register with the Department of Commerce, within 30 days of acquisition for property acquired on or after 1 July 2023. Penalties include $1,000 per day for late registration and forfeiture of the property.

Where is a Florida deed recorded?

In the official records of the county where the property is located. In most Florida counties that is the clerk of the circuit court. Orange County is the notable exception, where recording is handled by the Orange County Comptroller rather than the clerk, and in Broward it is the county’s Records, Taxes and Treasury Division. Section 695.26 sets out what must appear on the instrument before it can be accepted, including a reserved blank space at the top right of each page for the clerk’s use.

What is the difference between a warranty deed and a quitclaim deed?

A general warranty deed promises that the grantor owns what they are conveying and defends against defects arising at any time, including before the grantor owned the property. A special warranty deed makes that promise only for the period of the grantor’s own ownership. A quitclaim deed makes no promise at all — it conveys whatever the grantor happens to have, which may be everything or nothing. Sales use warranty deeds. Family transfers and title clean-ups usually use quitclaim deeds, which is fine when the parties know each other and fatal when they do not.

Worth separating from all of this: a warranty is not title insurance. A warranty is a promise by the grantor, enforceable only against that person and only so far as they can be found and can pay. Title insurance is a separate policy bought from an insurer, which pays on a covered defect regardless of who caused it or whether the grantor is still around. They are different products doing different jobs, and a quitclaim between family members ordinarily comes with neither.

This page is general information about Florida law and is not legal advice for any particular situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes, constitutional provisions, administrative rules and tax rates change, and documentary stamp tax, income tax, Medicaid and homestead exemption questions depend on facts specific to the property and the parties. Fees shown are flat fees for standard matters, cover the legal work and recording costs described and no other charge, and are confirmed in writing after we review the current recorded deed. Nothing here is a quote for your matter or a representation about how any tax authority will treat a particular transfer.