Florida Estate Planning Attorney

Most estate planning is sold by people who never see what happens next. We do.

Lorenzo Law is a Florida probate firm. We spend our days in probate court administering estates — which means we spend our days seeing which plans held up and which ones fell apart. A will signed with one witness instead of two. A power of attorney everyone assumed still worked after the death. A house that could not be left the way the owner intended, because Florida’s homestead rules said otherwise.

We draft estate plans the way we wish the ones we litigate had been drafted. We serve clients throughout Florida.

Florida estate planning: the short answers

Does Florida have an estate tax or an inheritance tax?

No — neither. Florida residents face federal estate tax only if the gross estate exceeds $15 million in 2026, the individual exemption stabilized at that figure by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with a 40% rate on taxable assets above it. Married couples can use portability to shield up to $30 million combined. For the overwhelming majority of Florida families, estate tax is not the planning problem. Probate is.

Which documents does a Florida estate plan actually need?

Five, in most cases: a last will and testament, a revocable living trust where circumstances call for one, a durable power of attorney, a designation of health care surrogate, and a living will.

Does a power of attorney still work after death?

No. A durable power of attorney terminates at death. This is the most common misunderstanding we encounter — a family holds a document they believe authorizes them to act, and it stopped being effective the moment the person died.

What does a will cost in Florida?

Our wills start at $675. Where a client needs additional documents — a trust, powers of attorney, health care documents — we discount the package rather than charging each document at full rate.

How a Florida will must be signed

This is the provision that decides cases, so here is what the statute actually requires.

Under Fla. Stat. § 732.502, a Florida will must be signed by the testator at the end of the will — or by another person subscribing the testator’s name at the end, in the testator’s presence and by the testator’s direction.

The testator must sign, or acknowledge the signature, in the presence of at least two attesting witnesses. And those witnesses must sign the will in the presence of the testator and in the presence of each other.

That last clause is where homemade and online wills fail. Not the words in the document — the room they were signed in. Two witnesses who each signed at a different time, or who were not present when the testator signed, can be enough to put a will in litigation.

Florida does not recognize holographic wills. A will written entirely in the testator’s own handwriting is not valid here simply because it is handwritten — § 732.502 expressly provides that a handwritten will executed in accordance with the section is not treated as a holographic will. Handwriting does not substitute for the witnesses.

If you signed a will while living in another state, § 732.502 provides that a nonresident’s will is valid in Florida if it was valid under the law of the place where it was executed.

The self-proving affidavit, and why it matters years later

A will can be made self-proved under Fla. Stat. § 732.503. The testator and both witnesses acknowledge and swear before an officer authorized to administer oaths, and the officer’s certificate is attached to or follows the will.

The payoff comes later, and it is significant. Under Fla. Stat. § 733.201, self-proved wills executed in accordance with the code may be admitted to probate without further proof.

Without it, someone has to find your witnesses. A will signed in 2010 may need a witness located in 2036 — who may have moved, lost capacity, or died. When the witnesses cannot be produced, the will can still be admitted, but the process becomes slower and more expensive at exactly the moment your family can least absorb either.

Signing the affidavit costs nothing extra at execution. Skipping it costs your family time and legal fees.

The five documents, and what each one does

Last will and testament

Tells the probate court how you want your assets distributed and appoints a personal representative to carry it out. A will does not avoid probate. It directs it.

Revocable living trust

A properly funded revocable trust keeps the assets titled in it out of probate. Funded is the operative word. An unfunded trust is a stack of paper — we regularly probate estates where a trust exists and the house was never deeded into it.

Durable power of attorney

Authorizes someone to act on your financial affairs while you are alive and unable to act for yourself. It ends at death. Authority after death comes from the probate court, not from this document.

Designation of health care surrogate

Names the person who makes medical decisions for you if you cannot.

Living will

States your own wishes about life-prolonging procedures, so the decision is not left to someone else to guess at.

What happens if you do nothing

Florida’s intestacy statutes decide — a statutory formula that knows nothing about your circumstances. It does not account for the child you supported, the partner you never married, or the sibling you have not spoken to in twenty years.

The estate still goes through probate. It simply goes through without your instructions.

Where an estate qualifies, Fla. Stat. § 735.201 allows summary administration — a shorter, less expensive path. It is available where the value of the entire estate subject to administration in Florida, less the value of property exempt from creditors’ claims, does not exceed $150,000, or where the decedent has been dead more than two years. For a testate estate, the will must not direct administration under Chapter 733.

That “less exempt property” clause is routinely misread. The threshold is not the gross value of everything the person owned.

The Florida homestead problem nobody warns you about

Florida’s constitutional homestead protections restrict how the family home may be devised. Where a person is survived by a spouse or a minor child, the homestead cannot simply be left to whomever the will names.

An estate plan drafted without accounting for this produces a document that reads clearly and does not do what the client intended. It is Florida-specific, and it is the most common defect we see in plans built from national templates and online forms.

Will or trust — how the decision is actually made

Not by net worth. By circumstance.

A will is usually sufficient where the estate is straightforward, the beneficiaries are in agreement, and there is no out-of-state real property.

A trust earns its cost where there is real property in more than one state, a blended family, a beneficiary who should not receive assets outright, a business interest, or a genuine need for privacy — probate is a public proceeding; a trust administration is not.

Anyone who recommends the same instrument to every client is selling a product, not giving advice.

Estate planning across Florida

We represent clients throughout the state. Probate is administered county by county, and the practical differences between circuits are real — filing procedures, local rules, and how quickly a court will act.
We also maintain a detailed Miami estate planning attorney page for clients in Miami-Dade County.

Frequently asked questions

How many witnesses does a Florida will need?

At least two. They must sign in the presence of the testator and in the presence of each other, under Fla. Stat. § 732.502.

What is a self-proving affidavit?

A sworn certificate executed under Fla. Stat. § 732.503 alongside the will. It allows a self-proved will to be admitted to probate without further proof under Fla. Stat. § 733.201, so nobody has to locate your witnesses years later.

Can I write my own will in Florida?

Nothing prevents it. What we see in probate court is that self-drafted wills fail on execution and on ambiguity far more often than on content. Florida does not recognize holographic wills, so handwriting it does not remove the witness requirements.

Is an online will valid in Florida?

It can be, if it satisfies Fla. Stat. § 732.502. The failures are almost always in how it was signed rather than what it said.

Does a trust avoid probate in Florida?

Only for assets actually titled in the trust. Funding is the step that gets skipped.

Do I need an estate plan if I do not have much?

Estate planning is about who decides and how, not how much. The families most damaged by having no plan are usually not wealthy ones.

How often should an estate plan be reviewed?

After any marriage, divorce, birth, death, move to or from Florida, or significant change in assets.

Do I need a Florida attorney if my will was drafted in another state?

A nonresident’s will valid where it was executed is generally valid in Florida under Fla. Stat. § 732.502. But Florida’s homestead rules and personal representative qualification requirements catch out-of-state plans regularly. It is worth a review, not necessarily a rewrite.

Talk to a Florida estate planning attorney

If you are not sure what you already have, or whether what you signed years ago still does what you intended, that is a short conversation and worth having. We represent clients across Florida.