Lady Bird Deed After Death in Florida: What the Family Does Next

In the ordinary case, when the owner of a Florida lady bird deed dies the house passes at that moment to the people named in the deed — no probate, no court order, nobody’s signature. That is what the instrument is built to do. It is not automatic in every case, though: it depends on what the recorded deed actually says, on whether another owner or life tenant is still living, and on whether everyone named to inherit outlived the owner. What to do with a lady bird deed after death in Florida starts with establishing those facts, and then comes down to documents you record, calls you make, and one deadline you cannot miss.

Almost everything written about these 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. If your parent is still living and you are helping arrange a deed, see my page on helping a parent get a lady bird deed.

You probably do. But there are 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, in the order you should do it. Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar member 107002.

One note on vocabulary before we start, because it confuses people at exactly the wrong moment. The document may be called a lady bird deed, a ladybird deed, or an enhanced life estate deed — three names for one instrument, and nothing here turns on which your copy uses. The person who signed it was the life tenant. The people named to inherit are the remaindermen. That is you.

The table below sets out the ordinary outcome, not a promise about your situation. It assumes three things worth establishing first: that what you are holding is a complete, recorded enhanced life estate deed; that the person who died was the last surviving owner or life tenant rather than one of two still on the title; and that the beneficiaries named in the deed were all living at the date of death. Change any one of those and the answers change with it. The four checks immediately after the table are how you find out which case you are in.

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
Do you sign a new deed	No. You do not sign a deed on behalf of someone who has died
Homestead exemption	Usually does not carry over — re-apply by March 1. A surviving spouse can be an exception
The assessment cap	Resets on a change of ownership unless a statutory exception applies
First call	The homeowner’s insurance carrier — not the lawyer
Call	(305) 224-6811

Before the Five Steps: Four Things to Establish

Everything below assumes a set of facts that may not be yours. Check these four first, because each one changes the answer.

• Do you have the complete recorded deed? Not the tax bill, not the closing statement, not page one — the whole recorded instrument, pulled from the clerk’s official records. Everything on this page turns on its wording.
• Who died, and is another owner or life tenant still living? If an enhanced life estate was reserved to two people and only one has died, nothing may have vested in anyone yet.
• Has a named beneficiary died? If one of the people named to inherit died before the owner did, that share may have failed rather than passing to their family.
• Is a sale, a dispute, a mortgage problem or a deadline pending? Any of those changes the order you do things in, and one of them — a reverse mortgage — runs on a clock.

If you cannot answer all four yet, start with the first. The recorded deed answers most of the rest, and a Florida lady bird deed is only as good as the words actually in it.

What To Do With a Lady Bird Deed After Death in Florida: The 5 Steps

If you read nothing else on this page, do these five things, in this order. Everything below is the detail behind them.

1. Order certified copies of the death certificate — several of them, in the version that does not state the cause of death.
2. Pull the recorded deed from the county clerk’s website and read the words, to confirm it is an enhanced life estate deed and to see exactly who takes and in what shares.
3. Record a certified death certificate in the official records of each county containing the property interests covered by the deed or deeds under review — not every county where she ever owned something.
4. Notify, in this order: the homeowner’s insurance carrier, the mortgage servicer, the county property appraiser. The insurer first, in the first week.
5. Apply for the homestead exemption in your own name by March 1 of the year you first claim it, if the house is going to be your permanent residence.

Steps 1, 3 and 5 you can do yourself. Step 2 is where people get into trouble, because reading a deed is not the same as looking at one. Step 4 has a deadline nobody tells you about.

Which Situation Are You In?

The rest of this page is long because the right next step genuinely differs from family to family. Find your row, read that section first, and come back to the rest later.

Your situation	What decides it	Read first
Keeping the house to live in	The March 1 filing deadline, whether an exception preserves the cap, and the running costs that become yours at the date of death	Does the homestead exemption transfer to heirs · Who pays the bills now
Planning to sell	What a title underwriter will require before it will insure the sale	What the title company will ask for
More than one of you inherited	Whether the deed says “with right of survivorship,” and whether you all want the same thing	Multiple beneficiaries · If the beneficiaries disagree
Another owner or life tenant is still living	How the deed is worded. Florida does not presume survivorship between co-owners	Two names on the deed and one owner died
Something looks wrong with the deed	Whether the reserved powers are there, whether a spouse joined, whether a beneficiary died first	Is the document actually a lady bird deed · Mistakes that surface after the owner dies

What Help After a Death Actually Looks Like

This is different work from preparing a new deed, and it is priced separately. Drawing up a lady bird deed in the state of Florida for a living owner is a flat-fee job with a known shape. Working out what happened after an owner died is not, because it depends entirely on what the recorded deed says and on what else is in the estate.

The post-death deed review is $475, flat. That covers my review of the existing recorded deed you supply, and a 30-minute consultation with me — Jose Lorenzo, not a paralegal. In it I read the deed and tell you what it actually did, we discuss how the death you have reported affects the ownership situation, and I identify the next steps that fit your facts.

What that fee is not. It is not a title search, and it is not a comprehensive review of the whole estate. Preparing or recording further documents, administering a probate, and representing you in a dispute are separate engagements — each with its own agreed scope and fee, quoted before any of it starts.

What to have ready. The recorded deed; a copy pulled from the clerk’s official records website is fine. The death certificate, if you have one yet. The names of everyone the deed mentions. And one sentence about what you want to do with the property — keep it, sell it, or work out who owns what.

How to start. Get in touch and describe the situation and any deadline you are facing. Making that initial inquiry costs nothing, and it is not itself the paid review — I will confirm the scope, and give you instructions for delivering the documents, before you send anything sensitive. Request a deed review and 30-minute consultation.

What Happens to the House When the Owner Dies?

If she signed a lady bird deed, the property transfers at the moment of death by operation of that deed — 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. Florida’s Fourth District put the distinction plainly in Varano v. Varano, 415 So. 3d 1100 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025), in a footnote quoting the Third District’s decision in Hirschenson: under a lady bird deed the life tenant “retains the right to convey or mortgage the property without the joinder of the remainderman,” and in the absence of one, she does not. The Third District said the same about mortgaging in Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of MI, 389 So. 3d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023).

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.

Is the Document You Are Holding Actually a Lady Bird Deed?

Check this before you do anything else, because if the reserved powers are missing, the rest of this page does not apply to you.

“Lady bird deed” is a nickname. The instrument is an enhanced life estate deed, and what makes it enhanced is one paragraph reserving powers to the owner during her lifetime. Pull the recorded deed off the clerk’s website and look for language along these lines:

• a life estate conveyed to the owner, or reserved to the grantor, together with the right to sell, convey, mortgage, lease, encumber or otherwise dispose of the property
• the right to do so without the joinder or consent of the remaindermen
• the right to revoke or amend the remainder interest during the grantor’s lifetime
• the remainder passing only as to whatever interest remains at death

If that paragraph is not there, you may be holding an ordinary life estate deed, and the consequences are different in ways that matter. Under an ordinary life estate the life tenant cannot convey the fee without the remaindermen joining — a unilateral deed conveys only the life estate. Chapman v. Chapman, 526 So. 2d 131 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988). That changes who owned what during her lifetime, whether a sale she made during life was effective, and what a title company will require from you now.

Drafting errors in this exact paragraph are real and they surface at the worst moment. Hirschenson involved a deed where “grantor” and “grantee” had been transposed inside the reserved-powers clause, and the trial court had to reform the instrument before anyone could rely on it.

The practical version: read the document, not the label. A deed titled “Enhanced Life Estate Deed” that omits the reserved powers is not one, and a deed titled nothing in particular that contains them is.

Lady bird deed, ladybird deed, enhanced life estate deed — is there a difference?

No. Three names, one instrument. People ask what a ladybird deed in Florida is and what a lady bird deed in Florida is as though they were separate things, and they are not.

“Enhanced life estate deed” is the technical description and the one a title examiner will use. “Lady bird deed” is the nickname, usually traced to a teaching example involving Lady Bird Johnson. “Ladybird deed,” as one word, is simply how a lot of people write it. Your recorded document may carry any of the three across its title, its body and the clerk’s index, and the mismatch means nothing.

Where the label does matter is the direction I gave above: not what the document is called, but whether the reserved-powers paragraph is in it.

What Is a Remainderman, and What Are Your Rights Now?

A remainderman is the person named in a deed to receive real estate when the life estate ends. That is you. Until she died you held a remainder interest; from the moment she died you hold the property.

It is a strange, archaic word to meet for the first time in a document about your mother’s house, and nobody explains it. The meaning is narrow and it is not complicated: whoever is named to take at the end of the life estate is the remainderman. During her lifetime she was the life tenant. You were the remainderman. Now the life estate has ended and you are the owner.

Life tenant and remainderman — who was who?

Two roles, one property, running at the same time. Sorting out which of you was which is the fastest way to understand what you can and cannot do now.

A life tenant is the person who holds the property for the duration of her own life. That was her. Note the difference between the person and the interest: the life estate is the interest in the land, the life tenant is the human being who holds it. People use the two phrases interchangeably and it causes real confusion when a title examiner uses them precisely.

Her rights as life tenant, while she was alive, were close to total. Because this was an enhanced life estate deed she could live there, rent it out, sell it, mortgage it, or revoke your interest entirely — none of which needed your agreement, and none of which you could have prevented. Your rights during the same period were, in practical terms, nothing at all.

That asymmetry is the whole design. It is also why a lady bird deed does not expose the house to your creditors, your divorce or your bad decisions while the parent is still living — a point covered further down, because it changes the day she dies.

Remainderman or beneficiary — is there a difference?

Technically yes; practically, here, no. A remainderman takes under a deed. A beneficiary takes under a will, a trust, a retirement account or an insurance policy.

Families use the words interchangeably and the deed itself may say “beneficiary” or “grantee” rather than “remainderman.” None of that changes the analysis. What matters is what the instrument does, not which noun it chose.

Does a remainderman own the property?

Before the death, no — not in any way you could have used. After the death, yes, completely.

That gap is the entire design of the instrument, and it is why a lady bird deed behaves so differently from putting a child’s name on the deed. During her lifetime you held no vested interest in the property at all. You could not live there, rent it, sell it or borrow against it, and you could not have stopped her doing any of those things herself. What you held was a contingent expectancy — the right to receive whatever was left at her death, if anything was.

That is the feature, not a flaw. It is also why her creditors, and yours, were kept away from the house while she was living, and it is the reason the Fourth District in Varano v. Varano, 415 So. 3d 1100 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025), drew such a sharp line between this deed and an ordinary life estate, where remaindermen do hold vested rights and the life tenant cannot convey without them.

She did not wipe it out. So it ripened, at the moment of death, into ownership.

Which answers the question people ask in the other direction: can a remainderman be removed from a life estate? While she was alive, yes — she could have signed a new deed naming someone else and never mentioned it. Now that she has died, no. Nobody can remove you, and no later document she left behind can either. Your interest is no longer an expectation; it is title.

Can a remainderman sell the property?

Now, yes. Before her death, no. This is worth stating plainly because families sometimes discover a signature they should not have given, or one they were asked for and refused.

Once the remainder has vested your rights are those of any other owner — subject to the title company’s requirements set out further down this page, and subject to every other named remainderman agreeing, if there is more than one of you. What you could not have done is sell a thing during her lifetime, and she did not need your signature to sell during hers. Had you signed something purporting to transfer your interest while she was alive, it would have conveyed only the contingent expectancy you actually held — an interest she could then have wiped out by revoking the deed. No Florida appellate decision has squarely characterized that remainder interest as vested or defeasible, so treat this as settled practice rather than a decided rule. Agee v. Brown, 73 So. 3d 882 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011), is sometimes cited for the point, but it decides a will-contest standing question; all it says about the deed is that an enhanced life estate remainder drafted by the attorney who received it is not void in itself and instead raises a rebuttable presumption of undue influence.

The same answer applies to borrowing. Can a remainderman mortgage a property? Now, yes — you own it, and a lender will underwrite you like any owner once the record is clean. Before her death, no: the power to mortgage was hers alone, which is exactly what the Third District confirmed in Hirschenson.

And the duties arrive with the rights. From the date of death the property taxes, the insurance, the maintenance and the mortgage are your responsibility, not the estate’s.

Can a ladybird deed have multiple beneficiaries?

Yes, and how they are named is the difference between a clean inheritance and a decade of trouble. An enhanced life estate deed can name as many beneficiaries as the owner likes.

A deed can name two, three or ten remaindermen. What it must do is say how they take. Named “with right of survivorship,” the survivors absorb a deceased beneficiary’s share. Named without that language, Florida does not presume survivorship — section 689.15 — and you are tenants in common, each holding an undivided fractional interest that passes through your own estate when you die.

Tenants in common is the default, and it is the arrangement that produces every argument covered later on this page: one sibling wanting to sell, another wanting to live there, a third who has moved out of state and stopped answering the phone.

What is your tax basis in the property?

Date-of-death value, in the ordinary case — not what she paid for it. This is the single most valuable consequence of the deed and most families never find out about it.

Because she kept the power to sell, encumber, revoke and change the beneficiaries right up to her death, the property is included in her gross estate under 26 U.S.C. §§ 2033 and 2036(a). Inclusion is what earns the step-up: a remainderman’s basis in life estate property is reset to fair market value on the date of death under 26 U.S.C. § 1014. In practice the capital gains tax on a prompt sale is often little or nothing. Florida adds no wrinkle — no state income tax, no state estate or inheritance tax.

The arithmetic is worth seeing once. She bought in 1994 for $80,000. It is worth $520,000 the day she dies. You sell it four months later for $525,000. Your gain is measured from the stepped-up $520,000, not the $80,000 she paid — so roughly $5,000, not $445,000. Had she deeded the house to you outright during her lifetime instead, you would generally have taken her basis and faced the larger figure.

The full treatment, including doc stamps and the gift-tax question, is on the lady bird deed tax consequences page.

What about a remainderman’s own debts?

The exposure nobody anticipates. Everyone examined the parent’s finances; nobody examined the children’s. A recorded judgment or a federal tax lien against one remainderman can reach that person’s interest when it vests, which means one beneficiary’s credit problems can encumber the family home. It is dealt with in the failure-modes section below.

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.

Does a lady bird deed avoid probate in Florida?

Yes as to the described real property, because the interest never becomes part of the probate estate. Whether the estate avoids probate is a different question and depends entirely on what else she owned and how it was titled. The deed usually removes the single largest and most complicated asset, which frequently changes what form of administration the rest requires — and sometimes removes the need for any. That is worth establishing before you assume either way — and if what remains is modest, when probate is not necessary in Florida sets out the paths that avoid a full administration.

What Documents Do You Record After a Florida Lady Bird Deed Death?

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 an enhanced life estate deed and 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.

What to gather before you do anything

Gathering is not the same as recording. Most of what follows you simply need in hand. Which of these documents, if any, also has to go into the official records is a separate question, and it is answered in the recording section below. Pulling the file together is a good first-week task for whoever in the family wants something useful to do.

• The recorded deed. Pull it from the clerk’s official records website by her name. This is the document that decides everything else on this page.
• Certified death certificates — several, in the version that does not state the cause of death.
• The mortgage statement, if there is a loan, and the declarations page of the homeowner’s policy.
• The property appraiser’s record for the parcel. One page off the county website, showing the current exemption and assessed value.
• A list of everything else she owned and how each thing was titled. That list, not the deed, is what decides whether the rest of the estate needs probate.

Of those, the certified death certificate is the usual starting document for recording. Whether anything else has to be recorded depends on the deed, on any title issues, and on what you intend to do with the property — an affidavit tying the decedent to the grantor, a corrective instrument, or something a title underwriter asks for when you sell. That is a question to answer after the deed has been read, not before. The rest of the list above is for whoever reads the situation with you.

Do I have to record a new deed in my name?

No. And you should not try.

This is the most common question I get on this subject and the most common thing people get wrong. A deed is a conveyance. A conveyance requires a grantor with capacity, and the grantor here has died — she cannot sign, and nobody can sign for her. A power of attorney does not survive her either; it ended at death.

What clears the record is not a new deed but proof that the triggering event happened: the recorded certified death certificate. In some situations an affidavit is recorded alongside it to tie the decedent named on the certificate to the grantor named in the deed, or to recite the legal description. That is an affidavit — a sworn statement of fact — not a transfer.

Where an affidavit is used, it is usually styled an affidavit of death — an affidavit of death in Florida does not transfer anything; it evidences the event that the deed already provided for. What you must not do is sign a quitclaim deed from your late mother to yourself, or from yourself to yourself, to “make it official.” It does not make it official. It puts a defective instrument in the chain of title that somebody will have to explain, or clear, later.

One further reason nobody can sign for her: section 709.2109(1)(a) terminates a power of attorney on the principal’s death, and anything an agent purports to do afterwards is void. “Durable” means the authority survives her incapacity. It does not survive her death.

Does a lady bird deed have to be recorded?

The deed itself should have been recorded during her lifetime, and if it was, the death certificate is all that is left to file.

Check that first. Pull the property up on the clerk’s official records index by her name and confirm the deed is actually there, with a book and page number. Most families find it is, because whoever prepared it recorded it the same week.

If it is not there — if the only copy is an unrecorded original in a folder in a drawer, or what you are holding turns out to be a blank lady bird deed Florida form somebody downloaded and never completed — stop and get advice before you record anything. A downloaded lady bird deed State of Florida template proves nothing on its own; what matters is whether the document in your hand was signed, witnessed, notarized and delivered. That is a materially different situation from the one this page describes, and it is covered in the failure-modes section below.

Long-form and short-form death certificates

Florida issues death certificates in two versions: one that states the cause of death and one that does not. The version without the cause of death is the one that goes into a public record, for reasons that should be obvious — anything recorded in the official records is readable by anyone, forever.

That is not squeamishness — cause of death is confidential under section 382.008, and the official records are readable by anyone forever. The clerk is expressly authorized to record a certified death certificate under section 28.222(3)(g).

Order the version with the cause of death separately if you need it. Insurers and some financial institutions ask for it. The clerk does not.

Get more copies than you think you need. The funeral home usually arranges the first batch. Banks, insurers, the mortgage servicer, the property appraiser and the county clerk will each want their own certified copy, and they will not give it back.

The legal description and the cover letter

A death certificate does not describe real estate. Nothing on it tells a future title examiner which parcel it relates to, or which recorded deed it completes.

The practical fix is to record the certificate under a transmittal or affidavit of title that recites the legal description of the property, the book and page of the original enhanced life estate deed, and the fact of her death. It costs a few dollars more and it turns two unrelated documents in the official records into a chain anyone can follow.

To be precise about its status: no Florida statute requires that affidavit, and none prescribes its form. Your title does not depend on it — the deed already did that work. It is a title-underwriting custom, and it is worth following, because the company that has to insure your sale in five years will ask for exactly this and it is far easier to produce now.

Where and what it costs to record

• Record in each county where the property interests you are dealing with are located. If the house is in the western Panhandle, that is the Escambia County Clerk, and my lady bird deed page for Pensacola and Escambia County sets out that counter and what it accepts. Each county’s official records are separate, so if the deeds under review cover parcels in more than one county, each county needs its own recording. Confine this to the interests actually being addressed rather than sweeping in everything she ever owned.
• The statutory charge is the same statewide — $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page under section 28.24.
• Most Florida clerks accept e-recording through a submitter, and several accept walk-in and mail. Turnaround ranges from same-day to about a week depending on the county.

If you are selling, the title company will tell you what else it wants. If you are keeping it, doing this properly now is very much cheaper than reconstructing it in fifteen years.

What the Title Company Will Ask For When You Sell

Recording the death certificate satisfies the clerk. It does not always satisfy an underwriter. This is the part nobody writes about, and it is the part that stops closings.

When you eventually sell or refinance, a title insurer has to be willing to insure that you own what you say you own. Its examiner is looking at a deed signed by someone who is dead, a reserved power that could have been exercised at any time in the intervening years, and no court file confirming anything. Expect to be asked for some combination of the following.

The affidavit of continuous marriage — or of marital status at death

Florida homestead is constitutional, and the restrictions on it turn on facts that are not on the face of any deed: whether the owner was married, and whether she had minor children. Under Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution, a married owner cannot alienate homestead — by sale, gift or mortgage — unless the spouse joins in the instrument. A lady bird deed is a lifetime alienation, so that requirement applies to it in full.

And the consequence is more serious than most pages on this subject admit. A homestead deed signed without the required spousal joinder is not a technicality that can be tidied up later. Florida courts have treated such a deed as void from the outset, or at the very least as ineffective and voidable by the spouse and protected heirs — Clemons v. Thornton, 993 So. 2d 1054 (Fla. 1st DCA 2008) (deed conveying a remainder interest in homestead without spousal joinder ineffective); Robbins v. Robbins, 360 So. 2d 10 (Fla. 2d DCA 1978). It is not a defect the grantee can cure alone.

You will see it written elsewhere that such a conveyance is merely “ineffectual until the spouse joins.” That is the rule for mortgages, not for deeds. Pitts v. Pastore, 561 So. 2d 297 (Fla. 2d DCA 1990), and more recently Brown v. Towd Point Mortgage Trust 2017-6, 423 So. 3d 887 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025), both concerned mortgages of homestead — an executory lien that can be perfected later. A deed purports to move title immediately, and it is judged differently.

A separate point that is often run together with this one: section 732.4015(1), which bars the devise of homestead where a spouse or minor child survives, governs wills and trusts. It does not directly govern the validity of a lifetime deed. The joinder requirement in Article X, section 4(c) is what does that work.

So the underwriter needs sworn evidence of what her marital status was on the date the deed was signed and on the date she died, and whether any minor child survived her. That is what an affidavit of continuous marriage — or of continuous marital status — is for.

Proof that nothing happened during her lifetime

The reserved powers are the problem and the point. Because she could have sold, mortgaged, revoked or amended at any time, the examiner has to confirm that she did not — or that whatever she did is properly of record. Expect a search of the years between the deed and the death, and an affidavit that no conveyance, mortgage, lease, revocation or amendment was made and left unrecorded.

Whether the reserved-powers language actually works

Back to the self-check above. If the retained powers are absent or defective, the underwriter’s position is that you took a remainder in an ordinary life estate — which means any lifetime conveyance she made without your joinder may not have conveyed what the buyer thought, and it means your own title now rests on a different theory. This is where a scrivener’s error becomes a closing delay rather than a footnote.

The reason to know all of this now is that every item on the list is easier to produce in the month after a death, while people who remember the facts are alive and reachable, than it is three years later when a buyer’s lender is waiting.

Does the Homestead Exemption Transfer to Heirs in Florida?

Usually not automatically — but there are real exceptions, and they are worth checking before you assume the worst.

The starting point is that an exemption belongs to the owner who qualified for it. When that owner dies, the deceased’s exemption comes off at the end of the year, and whoever now owns the home has to apply for their own. For most beneficiaries that is what happens.

The exceptions: a surviving spouse, a minor child, a resident dependent

Two different things can survive a death, and it pays to keep them apart. One is the exemption itself. The other is the Save Our Homes capped assessed value — the accumulated gap between what the house is worth and what it is taxed on, which on a house held for thirty years is usually the bigger number of the two.

The exemption itself

There is one established situation where it does not end at the death: where the house was held by a married couple as a tenancy by the entireties, one spouse held the exemption, and the surviving spouse goes on using the home as their permanent residence. In that narrow case the death of one spouse does not destroy the other’s exemption and the survivor does not have to refile. Note how specific that is — it is a rule about entireties property, so it will not cover a lady bird deed where one spouse owned the house alone and named the other as beneficiary.

Outside that, a new owner qualifies in their own right or not at all. The test is ownership plus permanent residence, both measured as of January 1 — section 196.031(1)(a).

The capped value

Section 193.155(3)(a) reassesses a homestead at just value on the January 1 following a change of ownership, except in a list of situations written into the statute. The ones that arise at a death:

• A surviving spouse. Title changed or transferred between spouses, including a change or transfer to a surviving spouse — section 193.155(3)(a)2.
• A surviving spouse or minor child taking by operation of law under section 732.401 — section 193.155(3)(a)3.
• A resident dependent. On the owner’s death, a transfer to someone who is both a permanent resident of the property and legally or naturally dependent on the owner — section 193.155(3)(a)4. Both halves are required.
• A surviving joint tenant with right of survivorship who was already entitled to and receiving the homestead exemption on the property and who continues to qualify for and receive it — section 193.155(3)(a)5.

A beneficiary who is none of those — the ordinary lady bird case of an independent adult child named as remainderman — fits no exception, and the property is reassessed at just value the following January 1. On a long-held Florida house that can multiply the tax bill, and it is the largest recurring cost most families do not see coming.

Two claims you will read online are both wrong. A lady bird deed does not automatically preserve the Save Our Homes cap, and it does not automatically reset it either — the result turns on whether the person taking the property fits one of the statutory exceptions, and occupancy alone does not decide that. And portability, the separate benefit that lets a person carry their own accrued cap to a new home, is not a route for an heir to move the deceased owner’s cap onto the inherited house.

Recording the deed during her lifetime did not reset anything

This worries people once they start reading the statute for themselves. A beneficial interest for life is declared to be equitable title to real estate — section 196.041(2) — so recording an enhanced life estate deed while she was alive was a change between legal and equitable title under section 193.155(3)(a)1.b, which the statute excludes from change of ownership so long as no additional person applied for a homestead exemption on the property. Her exemption and her cap were not disturbed by the deed. What matters is the death, not the recording.

Because the outcome turns on who survived, how the property was owned and who actually lived there, confirm your own position with the property appraiser in the county where the house is. They administer it, they publish the forms, and asking costs nothing. County guidance — see, for example, the Pinellas County Property Appraiser’s published FAQs — sets out how that office handles the paperwork. The assessment rules themselves are at section 193.155.

Eligibility and the March 1 deadline are two different things

Keep them apart, because people routinely collapse them. Eligibility is about whether you hold title and make the property your permanent residence. March 1 is the filing deadline for the year you are claiming — under section 196.011 the application for that year is due by then.

Being eligible does not file the application for you, and filing on time does not create eligibility you did not have. Put March 1 in the calendar the week she dies: it falls due months after everyone has gone home, and it is the cheapest thing on this page to get right.

And if March 1 goes past, it is not automatically over. Missing the date waives the exemption for that year, but section 196.011 keeps two doors open. Where the failure to file by March 1 was demonstrably the result of postal error, the value adjustment board shall grant the exemption to an otherwise eligible applicant — subsection (8). Otherwise, a qualified applicant who missed the deadline files with the property appraiser within 25 days after the statutory notice is mailed and, if the appraiser refuses, may petition the value adjustment board under section 194.011(3), which may grant the exemption for the current year on a showing of particular extenuating circumstances — subsection (9). Both clocks are short and both run from a notice that arrives in the post, so the day you realize the date has gone is the day to act.

If the house will not be your permanent residence

Then there is no homestead exemption on it for you at all, and the non-homestead assessment rules apply instead. That changes the arithmetic on whether to keep it, and it is worth running the numbers before you decide rather than after.

Who Do You Notify After the Owner Dies?

The insurer first, then the mortgage servicer, then the property appraiser. In that order, and sooner than feels necessary.

Homeowner’s insurance: the first call you make

This is the most urgent item on the entire page and the one no other page tells you about.

A homeowner’s policy is a contract with a named insured, and that person has died. The house is now owned by somebody who is not named on it. Whether, and for how long, that policy still responds is a question about the wording of your particular policy — not something anyone can answer from a web page, and not something you want to be finding out in the week you have a loss.

So call the carrier in the first week and ask them. Have the recorded deed and a death certificate to hand. These are the questions worth asking, in this order:

• Does this policy still cover the property now that the named insured has died, and if so for how long?
• What do you need from me to add me as a named insured, or to write a new policy in my name?
• The house is going to be empty for a while — does that change anything? Ask this one even if you think it does not apply. Policies commonly treat an unoccupied or vacant house differently from a lived-in one, and the terms vary between carriers and between policies. Ask what your policy says, what it would cost to cover the gap, and get the answer in writing.
• If there is a mortgage: is the premium escrowed, and what happens if this policy lapses? Ask specifically whether the servicer would place its own coverage, what that would cost, and what it would and would not protect.

None of that takes more than one phone call, and it is the cheapest thing on this page relative to what it prevents.

The mortgage servicer and the Garn-St. Germain Act

If there is a loan, federal law is on your side — but only if you engage with it.

The instinct after a death is to keep quiet and keep paying, on the theory that telling the bank invites trouble. That instinct is wrong here, and it costs people the protection Congress wrote for exactly this situation.

The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, codified at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3, bars a lender from exercising a due-on-sale clause on certain transfers. The implementing regulation, 12 C.F.R. § 191.5(b)(1)(v)(A), exempts a transfer to a relative resulting from the borrower’s death where that relative occupies or will occupy the property. In plain terms: if you are family and you are going to live there, the bank generally cannot call the loan just because she died and you inherited.

Read the two conditions, because they are conditions. A remainderman who is not a relative, or a relative who is keeping the house as a rental or a second home rather than occupying it, falls outside the exemption — and the lender may then exercise the due-on-sale clause. That is a real planning point and almost nobody states it.

Separately, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mortgage servicing rules at 12 C.F.R. §§ 1024.30–1024.38 govern how a servicer must deal with a successor in interest — someone who acquires an ownership interest in a property securing a mortgage by, among other things, the death of the borrower. On notice of the death the servicer must promptly facilitate communication with potential successors, tell you what documents it needs to confirm your identity and ownership, and make that determination promptly. Once confirmed, you are treated as a borrower for the servicing rules, which includes loan information and access to loss-mitigation options.

What to do: call the servicer, say the borrower has died and you are a successor in interest, and ask what documents they need — usually the death certificate and the recorded deed. Ask for it in writing. Keep paying in the meantime.

None of this is unusual. A lady bird deed on mortgaged property is common — the deed does not pay off the loan, disturb it, or require the lender’s consent, so plenty of people sign one over a house they are still paying for. An inherited house with a mortgage is simply a house you own and a loan you now deal with directly.

Reverse mortgages are different, and the difference is dangerous. The Garn-St. Germain protection above does not apply to them at all, and reverse mortgages are also carved out of most of the CFPB servicing rules just described. Under 24 C.F.R. § 206.27, a HECM becomes due and payable in full when the last surviving borrower dies and the property is no longer a borrower’s principal residence — subject to a deferral period for an eligible non-borrowing spouse.

If you are an heir rather than a non-borrowing spouse, your options are three: repay the loan (usually by selling or refinancing), pay 95% of appraised value if the balance exceeds what the house is worth, or hand the property back by deed in lieu. HUD generally allows around six months to arrange it, with extensions available on request. Contact the servicer within thirty days of the death. This is the one item on this page with a hard clock on it, and waiting to see what arrives in the mail is how families lose the equity.

The county property appraiser

For the homestead application above, and because they will find out anyway when the death certificate records. Tell them the property passed under an enhanced life estate deed and give them the recording details. Call them, ask what they want, and file the exemption application in the same conversation if you can.

Who pays the bills now?

You do, from the date of death. Not the estate, not the personal representative, not whoever is handling the rest of her affairs — the house is yours, so its running costs are yours.

That covers the property taxes after the owner dies, the homeowner’s insurance premium, the mortgage payment if there is one, the association dues, and the utilities. The November tax bill will arrive addressed to a dead person and it still has to be paid. Utilities should be moved into your own name rather than left running on hers, both because the account will eventually be closed and because a lapse in electricity is how a Florida house grows mold.

Where more than one of you inherited, agree in writing who is paying what before the first bill lands. Money advanced by one co-owner for taxes, insurance and upkeep is the beginning of a claim for contribution against the others, and it is far better to record it as a shared arrangement than to reconstruct it in an argument two years later.

And yes, you can live in the house — you own it. If you are one of several owners, moving in is a decision the others have an interest in, for the reason just given.

Two Names on the Deed and One Owner Died: What Happens in Florida?

It depends entirely on which words appear on the deed, and the answer is different for each of the four common arrangements.

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 survivorship has to be expressed rather than assumed — with the 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.

One more point that matters here and almost nowhere else on the internet: where co-owners hold with right of survivorship, section 731.201(33) excludes that property from the definition of protected homestead. The survivorship you wanted can cost the homestead protection you assumed you had.

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.

What If a Beneficiary Dies Before the Owner?

Read the deed. What happens depends on wording most people have never noticed.

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, and the three usual outcomes are very different:

Start with the rule that surprises people most: if the deed is silent, that share does not go to the deceased child’s family. It fails.

The reason goes back to what a remainder interest under this deed actually is. It never vested during her lifetime — she could have revoked it at any moment. An interest that never vested cannot pass through the estate of the person who was going to receive it. Florida’s anti-lapse statute, section 732.603, would rescue a gift in this position if it were a devise under a will, but it applies to wills only — not to deed remainders. Compare Perdew v. Townley, 623 So. 2d 798 (Fla. 2d DCA 1993), and Darian v. Weymouth, 76 So. 3d 15 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011), where contingent interests failed when the person entitled died too soon.

So the three outcomes turn entirely on drafting:

• Named with survivorship language — the surviving two take everything.
• Named with substitutionary language (“to my children, the descendants of a deceased child taking that child’s share”) — the grandchildren take it.
• Named with neither — the deceased child’s share simply fails, and it may fall back into your mother’s estate, which means probate for that share.

Note the timing carefully, because it cuts both ways. A remainderman who died before your mother takes nothing. A remainderman who survived her — even by a day — took title at her death, and that person’s share does pass through their own estate to their spouse or children.

Where every named remainderman predeceased the owner, the remainder fails entirely and the house reverts to her estate, passing under her will or by 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 could have been fixed before, which is the argument for reviewing these deeds every few years rather than filing them away.

What if a beneficiary is a minor?

This is about a minor you named as a beneficiary, not about a minor child of your mother’s who survived her — that question is the homestead one above, and it can stop the remainder passing at all. Where the share does pass to a minor, it vests in the child like any other, but a minor cannot sell, mortgage or encumber real property. Under section 744.301(2) a natural guardian can deal with a minor’s property without going to court only up to the limit that section sets, and a share of a house will usually be worth more than that, so selling or refinancing it takes a court-appointed guardian of the property and court approval under section 744.441(12). That is worth arranging before the house goes on the market rather than after a buyer is waiting.

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.

Does Florida have a transfer on death deed?

Not for land. Many states have adopted a transfer-on-death or beneficiary deed. Florida has not enacted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act or anything like it. What Florida has, doing broadly the same job, is the enhanced life estate deed — and it is worth being precise about what that is: a creature of common law. There is no Florida statute authorizing lady bird deeds, governing them, or prescribing their form. Anyone who tells you Florida has a transfer-on-death deed statute for real estate is mistaken.

Florida does allow transfer-on-death style designations on other things: pay-on-death deposit accounts under section 655.82, transfer-on-death registration for securities under the Florida Uniform Transfer-on-Death Security Registration Act at sections 711.50–711.512, and 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.

People search for ladybird deed versus transfer on death deed expecting a close comparison of two Florida options. There is only one Florida option. The comparison is really between what Florida offers and what a neighboring state offers, which matters mainly if she owned land in more than one state.

Do You Have To Wait for Creditors Before You Transfer or Sell?

Generally no, as to the house — because the house is not part of the probate estate that creditors get to reach.

This question comes up constantly and it is asked in a particular tone: someone finds out their father had nine thousand dollars of credit card debt, and assumes the house is now collateral for it.

Florida’s creditor claim process runs against the estate being administered. Section 731.201 defines “estate” as the property of a decedent that is the subject of administration. Property that passed outside administration by operation of the deed is not in it — which means the claim period in section 733.702 is not something you have to sit through. You are not required to wait before conveying or selling.

That is also why Florida’s Medicaid estate recovery statute, section 409.9101, reaches only the probate estate: recovery is accomplished by filing a statement of claim in a probate proceeding, and Florida has never expanded that definition to reach non-probate assets the way some states have.

What that does not mean:

• A mortgage, tax lien or judgment already attached to the property before death is still attached to the property. It travels with the house.
• Debts that were hers personally still have to be dealt with, out of whatever assets are being administered.
• A judgment against you — the remainderman — attaches to your interest the moment the remainder vests, which is one of the failure modes in the next section.
• There is one narrow exception running the other way. If a personal representative has spent estate money preserving, maintaining or insuring this house, section 733.608(2)–(3) gives a lien for those expenditures, which attaches when a notice of lien is recorded under section 733.608(4). It is limited to preservation costs. It does not turn the house into a general estate asset.

The Lady Bird Deed Mistakes That Surface After the Owner Dies

These are the eight things I actually see, in rough order of how often. None of them is fixable now. All of them were fixable before.

The deed was never recorded

It is in the safe deposit box, signed and notarized and never taken to the clerk. Two questions decide what happens, and they are different questions.

Was it delivered? A deed takes effect between the parties on delivery and acceptance, recorded or not. But delivery means she intended it to be operative then and gave up control of it. A deed she signed and kept among her own papers may never have been delivered at all — and recording it after her death does not cure that. It is a question of fact, and it is the one that decides whether you own anything.

Who else has an interest? Under section 695.01(1) an unrecorded conveyance is not good against creditors or subsequent purchasers for value without notice. A later buyer or lender who did not know about your deed can outrank it, and the burden of proving they knew falls on you — McCahill v. Travis Co., 45 So. 2d 191 (Fla. 1950). Record it the day you find it, then get it looked at.

The legal description is wrong, or incomplete

It describes one of two parcels, or it was copied from an old survey, or it omits an adjoining strip that the house partly sits on. The deed conveys what it describes, and no more.

A spouse never joined

Covered above under the title company section. If she was married when she signed and her spouse did not join in the deed, the conveyance of homestead is void from the outset, or at best voidable by the spouse and the protected heirs. It is emphatically not the milder “ineffectual until the spouse joins” rule you will see quoted elsewhere — that rule belongs to mortgages.

There was a spouse, or a minor child, at the date of death

The spousal point is the one that voids deeds, and it is covered above: Article X, section 4(c) requires the spouse to join in the conveyance, and a homestead deed signed without that joinder is void or voidable, not curable by you.

The minor-child rule works differently and is often misdescribed. Section 732.4015(1) restricts the devise of homestead where a minor child survives, and § 732.4017(1) is what pulls a lady bird deed into that rule: a lifetime transfer escapes the devise restriction only where the owner retained no power to revoke it or revest the interest in herself, and a lady bird deed retains exactly that power. So if she was survived by a minor child, the remainder in her deed does not take effect as to the homestead: because the deed retained the power to revoke or revest, section 732.4017 treats the remainder as a devise, and Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution and section 732.4015 prohibit that devise when a minor child survives — with the result that the homestead descends by operation of section 732.401 regardless of the deed. Her life estate and her retained powers are unaffected by the failure of the remainder, which is the severance principle that Clemons v. Thornton, 993 So. 2d 1054 (Fla. 1st DCA 2008), established in the analogous context of a missing spouse’s signature, though no Florida appellate court has yet applied that principle to a surviving minor child. The date that matters is the date of death, not the date she signed: In re McGinty’s Estate, 258 So. 2d 450 (Fla. 1971); Jones v. Jones, 412 So. 2d 387 (Fla. 2d DCA 1982). No Florida appellate court has applied that timing to an enhanced life estate deed, so it follows from the constitutional text rather than from a decided case. If every child of hers was eighteen or older when she died, the restriction never applied, whatever their ages when she signed. What it does mean is that where a minor child survived her, how homestead descends under section 732.401 can override what any document says. And note that section 732.7025‘s spousal waiver reaches only the devise restriction — it does not waive joinder or the creditor protections. If either fact is present in your family, this is not a page, it is a conversation.

A later deed or a later will turned up

She could revoke or amend during her lifetime, which is the feature. It also means the deed you are holding may not be the last one. Search the official records through the date of death, not through the date of your copy. If you think the later instrument should not stand, that is a different question, covered at can a lady bird deed be contested. For the wider picture on challenging any Florida deed — the grounds, who has standing and the deadlines — see how to set aside a deed in Florida.

She sold or mortgaged during her lifetime

Under Varano she could, without your joinder, and the remainder attaches only to whatever was left. If she sold, there may be nothing to inherit. If she mortgaged, you inherit the house with the mortgage on it.

The reserved-powers language is defective

The self-check at the top of this page. This is Hirschenson, and it took a reformation action to fix.

A judgment or IRS lien against you

This is the failure mode people never see coming, because everyone was looking at the parent’s finances and nobody looked at the children’s.

A judgment lien under section 55.10 reaches only the debtor’s actual beneficial interest — Miller v. Berry, 82 So. 764 (Fla. 1919); Arundel Debenture Corp. v. Le Blond, 190 So. 765 (Fla. 1939). While your mother was alive you had no such interest, so a judgment recorded against you then attached to nothing. The moment she dies, it springs onto the property. That is the reasoning of Aetna Insurance Co. v. LaGasse, 223 So. 2d 727 (Fla. 1969): the lien takes hold at the instant the remainder vests, because that is the first moment there is anything for it to take hold of. A federal tax lien under 26 U.S.C. § 6321 behaves the same way — see United States v. Craft, 535 U.S. 274 (2002).

The practical result: if any one of the people named on that deed has a judgment or a tax lien against them, the family home carries it from the day of the death, and the house cannot be sold or refinanced until it is satisfied or released. Find out now, not at closing.

What If the Beneficiaries Disagree About Selling the House?

There is no majority rule. Two out of three does not win.

The most common version: three siblings take the house in equal shares. Two want to keep it — one of them wants to move in. The third wants the money. Everyone assumes the two outvote the one. They do not.

Once the remainder vests, the three of you are tenants in common, each with an equal right to possession of the whole. No co-owner can be forced to stay in an ownership he does not want, and none can be forced to sell by the others’ preference alone. What breaks the deadlock is a partition action: under section 64.031 any one co-tenant may bring it against the others. The court can divide the land physically under section 64.061, but a single-family house cannot be sawn into thirds, so in practice it means a court-ordered sale under section 64.071 with the proceeds divided by share.

Where the house came down through the family, check whether it qualifies as heirs property under section 64.202. Florida’s Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, at part II of chapter 64, gives co-owners in that position a buyout right and other protections before any sale — which is often exactly what the sibling who wants to keep the house needs.

The practical order of operations is usually: agree a value, see whether the two who want to keep it can buy out the one who does not, and reduce whatever you agree to writing. Partition is the fallback, not the plan, because it is slow and it spends part of the asset on getting to the answer.

Two things worth knowing while you negotiate. Each of you bears the expenses in proportion to your share, and a co-owner who pays more than their share of taxes, insurance or necessary repairs can seek contribution from the others. And a co-owner who occupies the property exclusively may owe the others an occupancy charge, though a court has discretion about that in a partition case. Discuss both openly and early; they poison families when they surface late. If you are at this point, read what happens when siblings disagree over selling the family home and then call someone.

Can You Do All of This Yourself?

Some of it, easily. 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, call the servicer, and put the homestead application in the calendar for the new year. None of that needs me.

When do you actually need a Florida probate attorney?

When the answer to any of these is yes, or you do not know:

• The reserved-powers language is missing, or you cannot tell.
• She was married, or had a minor child, at any point that matters.
• A named remainderman died before she did.
• There is more than one of you and you do not all want the same thing.
• There is a mortgage, a reverse mortgage, or a lien of any kind.
• There are other assets that still need administering.
• Somebody is threatening to challenge the deed, or has produced a later one.

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 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.

What Does It Cost To Transfer a Lady Bird Deed Property After Death?

The recording side is cheap and predictable. The expensive part is the part you skip.

Item	What to expect	When
Certified death certificates	A modest per-copy fee; order several	First week
Recording the death certificate	$10.00 first page, $8.50 each additional page (s. 28.24), per county	First month
E-recording turnaround	Same day to about a week, depending on the county	—
Homestead exemption application	No fee	By March 1
Post-death deed review and 30-minute consultation	$475 flat. My review of the recorded deed you supply, plus 30 minutes with me. Not a title search or a full estate review	First month
Title work before a sale	Affidavits and a search; ordered through the closing	At sale
What probate on the same house would have cost	Not zero — but note that protected homestead is not in the attorney fee base under s. 733.6171(3)	Avoided

That last row deserves a sentence, because it is stated wrongly nearly everywhere. Attorney’s fees under section 733.6171 are calculated on the inventory value of the probate estate assets, and protected homestead is not among them — Lanford v. Phemister, 338 So. 3d 1049 (Fla. 5th DCA 2022), reversed an order paying fees from homestead sale proceeds. So the honest saving here is the avoided administration, delay and disruption — not a percentage of the house.

Lady Bird Deed After Death in Florida: Common Questions

Do I have to record a new deed in my name?

No. The grantor has died and cannot convey; what clears the record is the recorded certified death certificate, sometimes with an affidavit tying it to the deed and legal description. Do not sign a quitclaim deed to yourself — it creates a defect somebody will have to clear later.

How do I claim ownership after the grantor has passed away?

You already own it. The remainder vested at the moment of death. What remains is administrative: record the death certificate, notify the insurer, the servicer and the property appraiser, and apply for your own homestead exemption by March 1.

Can a lady bird deed be recorded after the death of the grantor?

The deed itself should have been recorded during her lifetime. An unrecorded deed can still be good between the parties if it was genuinely delivered, but under section 695.01 it loses to a later buyer or lender who had no notice of it — and a deed she signed and kept in her own papers may never have been delivered at all. Record it on discovery and get it looked at.

How long do I have to record the death certificate?

There is no deadline that forfeits your ownership — you own the property either way. But the practical cost of waiting is real: it complicates any future sale, and the March 1 homestead filing deadline is far easier to meet than to cure.

Do the homestead and senior exemptions automatically end when the owner dies?

Generally yes. An exemption is personal to the owner who qualified for it, so it does not travel with the property and the new owner applies in their own name. The established exception is a surviving spouse who goes on living in a home the couple held together as tenants by the entireties and who already had the benefit of the exemption there — that survivor is not sent back to the start. Everyone else qualifies in their own right or not at all.

What happens to Save Our Homes when the owner dies?

It depends on who inherits. A change of ownership resets the assessed value to just value under section 193.155 — but the statute excludes several situations that arise at a death, among them a transfer to a surviving spouse, a transfer by operation of law to a surviving spouse or minor child under section 732.401, a transfer to someone who was both permanently residing at the property and legally or naturally dependent on the owner, and a surviving joint tenant with rights of survivorship who was already entitled to and receiving the exemption and who continues to qualify for and receive it. For the ordinary beneficiary — an independent adult child — no exclusion applies, the reset happens the following January 1, and on a long-held house it can multiply the tax bill.

Do I have to reapply for the homestead exemption after death?

Yes, if the house is your permanent residence and you are not a surviving spouse covered by the narrow entireties exception. Her exemption does not transfer to you. File a new application in your own name with the county property appraiser by March 1 of the first year you are claiming it — and if that date has already gone by, ask the appraiser about the late-filing routes rather than writing the year off.

Will I be able to assume the current mortgage?

If you are a relative and you occupy or will occupy the house, the lender generally cannot call the loan because of the death — Garn-St. Germain, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3, and 12 C.F.R. § 191.5. A non-relative, or a relative keeping it as a rental, falls outside that protection. Either way, identify yourself to the servicer as a successor in interest.

What if there is a reverse mortgage on the house?

Different rules, and a hard clock. Garn-St. Germain does not protect you. Under 24 C.F.R. § 206.27 a HECM becomes due when the last borrower dies, subject to a deferral for an eligible non-borrowing spouse. Heirs can repay, sell, pay 95% of appraised value, or deed it back — generally within about six months. Call the servicer within 30 days.

Do I need to tell the insurance company the owner died?

Yes, in the first week. The policy names a person who has died and the house is now owned by someone else, so ask the carrier directly whether it still responds and what they need to put it in your name. If the house is going to sit empty, raise that on the same call — policies treat an unoccupied house differently and the terms vary.

What happens if a beneficiary dies before the grantor — does his share go to his heirs?

His share fails. A remainder under this deed never vests during the owner’s lifetime, so it cannot pass through the estate of someone who died first, and Florida’s anti-lapse statute applies only to wills. Survivorship language sends it to the survivors; substitutionary language sends it to his descendants; silence means it fails and may revert to the estate.

Do I have to wait for creditors before I transfer or sell?

No. The section 733.702 claim period runs against the probate estate, and this house never entered it. Liens already attached to the property before death are a different matter and travel with it, and a personal representative who spent estate money preserving the house can record a lien for those costs under section 733.608.

Can creditors take property transferred by a lady bird deed?

Her general creditors reach the probate estate, which this property is not part of. Medicaid estate recovery under section 409.9101 likewise reaches only the probate estate. Pre-existing liens on the property, and creditors of the remainderman, are the real exposures.

Will a title company insure a sale after the transfer?

Usually, once it has what it needs: the recorded death certificate, affidavits as to marital status and minor children, and confirmation that nothing unrecorded happened during the owner’s lifetime. Underwriters vary in how much they ask for.

Do judgment or tax liens against a remainderman attach to the property?

Yes — at the moment the remainder vests. Before the death there was no interest for a lien to attach to; at the death it springs onto the property (Aetna Ins. Co. v. LaGasse, 223 So. 2d 727 (Fla. 1969)). One beneficiary’s credit problem becomes the whole family’s title problem.

Does a ladybird deed override a will?

The deed operates outside the will. Property that passes by the deed is not part of the estate the will governs, so there is nothing for the will to redirect — subject to the homestead restrictions above. This is true whichever way the document spells its own name.

What is a ladybird deed in Florida?

It is an enhanced life estate deed: the owner keeps full control of the property for life — including the right to sell, mortgage or revoke without anyone’s permission — and whatever is left passes automatically at death to the people named in it. “Ladybird deed” and “lady bird deed” are the same instrument.

Two of the three of us want to keep the house and one wants to sell. Is it majority rules?

No. Co-owners are not outvoted. The remedy for a deadlock is partition, which for a single-family home usually means a court-ordered sale. A buyout agreed between you is almost always the better outcome, and if the house qualifies as heirs property under section 64.202 you may have a statutory buyout right before any sale.

Will I owe capital gains tax if I sell?

Because the property is included in the deceased owner’s estate for federal tax purposes, the beneficiaries generally take a basis stepped up to date-of-death value under 26 U.S.C. § 1014 — which often means little or no gain on a prompt sale. The detail is on the lady bird deed tax consequences page.

Do I need a lawyer after the owner’s death?

Not for the recording. Probably yes for the reading — of the deed, and of what else she owned. That is what the $475 post-death review is: I read the recorded deed you supply, and we spend 30 minutes on what it did, how the death affects the ownership, and what to do next. Further documents, probate on the rest of the estate, or a dispute are scoped and quoted separately.

Last updated: 17 September 2026.

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.

Request a Deed Review and 30-Minute Consultation

Every situation is different, and the difference is usually in the wording of one paragraph. The post-death review is $475 flat — my review of the existing recorded deed you supply, and 30 minutes with me on what it means and what to do next. It is not a title search or a full estate review, and any further work is scoped and quoted before it starts.

When you get in touch, tell me what happened, who is named on the deed, and whether anything is pending — a sale, a lender, a disagreement, a deadline. Please do not send sensitive records straight away. Describe the situation first and I will confirm the scope and give you document-delivery instructions.

Request a deed review and 30-minute consultation, or call (305) 224-6811.