Lady Bird Deed After Death in Florida: What the Family Does Next
Almost everything written about lady bird deeds is written for the person signing one. Very little is written for the family standing in the kitchen three days after the funeral, holding a copy of a deed nobody quite understands, wondering whether they now own a house.
You probably do. But nothing happens automatically, and there are half a dozen things that need doing in the first few weeks that no one will tell you about unless you ask. This page is that list. Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar member 107002.
| After the death | What to know |
|---|---|
| When the property passed | The moment of death, by operation of the deed |
| Does it go through probate | No — the house does not. Other assets may |
| What you record | A certified death certificate, in the county where the property sits |
| Homestead exemption | Does not carry over. Re-apply by March 1 |
| The assessment cap | Resets on a change of ownership |
| Call | (305) 224-6811 |
Does the house pass automatically when they die?
Yes. The transfer happens by operation of the deed at the moment of death, without a court order, a personal representative, or anyone’s signature.
That is the whole point of the instrument. While the owner was alive she held an enhanced life estate — she could live there, sell it, mortgage it or revoke the deed without asking you. Nothing vested in you until she died. When she died, it vested, and it vested without passing through her estate.
What that means practically is that you do not wait for anything. You do not need letters of administration. You do not need a judge. You do not need the other side of the family to agree. The house is yours from that morning.
What it also means is that nobody is going to contact you. No court file exists. No clerk sends a letter. The property appraiser does not know. The insurer does not know. Everything from here is something you initiate.
Does a lady bird deed avoid probate?
For the house, yes. For everything else, no — and that distinction is where most families get caught out.
The deed governs one asset: the real property described in it. It does nothing at all about the bank accounts, the vehicles, the brokerage account, the personal belongings, the life insurance with a stale beneficiary designation, or the timeshare in another county.
I see this misunderstanding constantly, and I understand where it comes from. Somebody did the responsible thing, put a deed in place, and told the family “it’s all taken care of.” The house was taken care of. The rest was not, and the family only discovers it when the bank will not release an account.
So the honest answer is that a lady bird deed usually removes the single largest and most complicated asset from probate, which frequently changes what kind of administration the rest of the estate needs, and sometimes means a much simpler and cheaper process. Whether it removes the need for probate altogether depends entirely on what else she owned and how it was titled. That is worth an hour with someone before you assume either way.
Two names were on the deed and one person died. What now?
It depends entirely on which words appear on the deed, and the answer is different for each of the four common arrangements.
This is the question I am asked more than any other in this area, and people are usually surprised there is not one answer.
| How the deed reads | What happens on the first death |
|---|---|
| Husband and wife, no other wording | Usually tenancy by the entireties — passes to the survivor automatically |
| Two or more owners “with right of survivorship” | The whole property goes to whoever outlives the other |
| Two or more owners, no survivorship wording | Tenants in common — the share passes through the deceased owner’s estate |
| Enhanced life estate reserved to both, remainder to others | Survivor keeps full control; remainder takes on the second death |
Read the third row twice, because it is the one that surprises people. Florida does not presume a right of survivorship between co-owners. Section 689.15 is the provision, and the general position is that survivorship has to be expressed rather than assumed — with a well-known exception for property held by a married couple as tenants by the entireties.
The practical consequence is stark. Two siblings own a house together, one dies, and the survivor assumes the whole thing is now hers. It may not be. The deceased sibling’s half may have gone to that sibling’s own heirs, and the survivor may now be a co-owner with a nephew she has not spoken to in a decade.
If two names are on your deed, get the actual document and read the words. Not the tax bill, not the closing statement — the recorded deed.
Is a lady bird deed the same as a transfer on death deed?
No, and in Florida it matters, because Florida has no transfer-on-death deed for real property.
This comes up so often that it deserves saying plainly. Many states have a transfer-on-death or beneficiary deed for land. Florida does not. What Florida has, doing broadly the same job, is the enhanced life estate deed — the lady bird deed.
Florida does allow transfer-on-death style designations on other things: pay-on-death bank accounts, transfer-on-death registration for securities, beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance. Those are different instruments for different assets, and none of them moves real estate.
So if you have been handed a document described as a transfer-on-death deed on a Florida house, read it. It is probably an enhanced life estate deed and the label is loose, which is fine. Occasionally it is a form downloaded for another state, which is not fine, and that is worth establishing before you rely on it.
What do I actually have to record?
A certified copy of the death certificate, in the official records of the county where the property sits. That is the step that closes the loop.
Title passed at death, but the public record still shows a life tenant who is no longer living. Recording the death certificate is what makes the chain of title read correctly to anyone looking at it later — a title company, a lender, a buyer.
A few practical notes from doing these:
- Get several certified copies. The funeral home usually arranges the first batch. You will need more than you think, because banks, insurers and the property appraiser each want one.
- Consider which version. Florida issues death certificates with and without the cause of death. The version without is the one that goes in a public record, for obvious reasons.
- Record in the right county. If she owned property in more than one county, each one needs its own recording.
- Recording costs are modest. The statutory charge is $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page under section 28.24, the same in every Florida county.
Some situations call for an additional instrument clarifying the transfer for the record, and whether yours does is a question of what the original deed says and how the property is going to be used. If you are selling, the title company will tell you what it wants. If you are keeping it, doing this properly now is much cheaper than reconstructing it in fifteen years.
What happens to the homestead exemption?
It does not carry over. The new owner has to apply, and the deadline is March 1.
This is the most expensive thing families get wrong, and it is expensive in a quiet way that nobody notices for a year.
Her exemption was hers. It ends. If you now own the house and it is your permanent residence, you apply in your own name, and under section 196.011 that application is due by March 1 of the year you are claiming. Missing it without a recognised excuse waives the exemption for that year.
Then there is the harder part. The Save Our Homes cap resets. Under section 193.155 the annual increase in assessed value is limited to three percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower — but that accumulated benefit belongs to the ownership, and a change of ownership resets the assessment to market value.
On a Florida house held since the 1990s, the gap between the capped assessed value and current market value can be very large indeed. A family that inherits a house their mother bought in 1994 frequently finds the tax bill is several times what she was paying. Nobody warns them, and it arrives in November.
If the house is not going to be your permanent residence, there is no homestead exemption on it at all, and the non-homestead assessment rules apply instead. That changes the arithmetic on whether to keep it.
Who do I need to tell?
The insurer first, then the mortgage servicer, then the property appraiser. In that order, and sooner than feels necessary.
The insurer is first because a homeowner’s policy is issued to a named insured, and that person has died. A policy in a dead person’s name, on a house now owned by somebody else, may not respond the way you expect when something happens. Call them in the first week. If the house is going to sit empty, say so — vacancy has its own consequences under most policies, and finding out afterwards is a bad way to find out.
The mortgage servicer, if there is a loan. Federal law protects certain family members who inherit a home with a mortgage — a successor in interest generally cannot be forced to pay the balance simply because of the death, and can usually assume the loan and be added to the account. But the protection only works if you engage with it. Ignoring the servicer, or paying the mortgage quietly without telling anyone, creates problems that are entirely avoidable.
The property appraiser for the homestead application above, and because they will find out anyway when the death certificate records.
What if one of the people named on the deed died first?
Read the deed. What happens depends on wording that most people have never noticed.
This one produces genuine surprises. Say the deed named three children as remaindermen, and one of them died before their mother. What happens to that third share is determined by how the deed was drafted.
If it named them with survivorship language, the surviving two typically take everything. If it named them without, the deceased child’s share may pass to that child’s own estate — meaning their spouse, or their children, now own a third of your family home. If the deed used language directing a deceased beneficiary’s share to their descendants, the grandchildren take it.
There is also the situation where every named remainderman predeceased the owner. Then the remainder may fail entirely and the house falls back into the estate, passing under the will or under intestacy — the exact outcome the deed was written to avoid. Where homestead is involved, section 732.401 may constrain where it lands regardless of what the will says.
None of this can be fixed after the death. All of it can be fixed before, which is the argument for reviewing these deeds every few years rather than filing them away.
Can I do all of this myself?
Some of it, yes. Recording a death certificate is not hard. What is hard is knowing which of the situations above you are actually in.
Here is what I would happily tell anyone to do without a lawyer: order certified death certificates, pull the recorded deed from the clerk’s website, call the insurer, and put a note in the calendar for the homestead application in the new year. None of that needs me.
Where a free form or a downloaded template will not help you is the part that decides everything — reading the deed and working out what it actually did. A blank form has no view on whether “with right of survivorship” appears in your document, whether a remainderman predeceased, whether the legal description covers the whole parcel, or whether the mortgage has a clause that needs handling. Those are the facts that determine whether you own a house outright, own it with a stranger, or do not own it at all.
And there is the other half of the estate. The house may have passed cleanly and the accounts may still need administering. Working out which form of probate the rest requires, or whether it requires any, is the part where getting it wrong is expensive.
What does this cost, and what do I do first?
Order the death certificates and pull the deed. Both are cheap and both are needed whatever happens next.
Then have someone read the deed alongside an inventory of her remaining assets and the way each one was held. That conversation usually takes an hour and it determines everything: whether you need probate at all, what form it takes, and what the tax picture looks like next year.
I do not charge for working out whether you need me. If the house passed cleanly and there is nothing else to administer, I will tell you that and you can get on with your life.
Call (305) 224-6811.
Where else should I look on this site?
Start with what the deed is, if you are not certain what you are holding.
What a lady bird deed actually is explains the instrument, and the Florida lady bird deed hub covers when it works and when it does not.
If the rest of the estate needs dealing with, what to do when someone dies in Florida is the wider checklist, and the Florida probate process sets out what administration involves.
And if you think the deed itself should not have been signed — that she did not understand it, or somebody pushed her into it — that is a different question, covered at can a lady bird deed be contested.
Last updated: 8 August 2026. What changed: new page. Recording charges, homestead application deadline, the assessment cap and the survivorship rule verified against the 2025 Florida Statutes. Mortgage successor-in-interest protections are federal and are described in general terms only.
This page is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every deed is worded differently and the outcomes above turn on that wording. Lorenzo Law is a solo practice — Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., assisted by staff. Florida Bar No. 107002.