Palm Beach County Lady Bird Deed Attorney
A lady bird deed in Palm Beach County lets you keep your home, keep every right to sell it or borrow against it, and name who receives it when you die — without a probate case being opened for the property. The formal name is an enhanced life estate deed, and you will also see it written as one word, ladybird deed. All three are the same instrument.
I am Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar No. 107002. At Lorenzo Law I prepare and record these for owners across the county, from Boca Raton and Delray Beach through West Palm Beach to Jupiter, and west to Wellington and the Glades. The fee for a standard matter is $675 flat. It includes speaking directly with me, deed preparation, online notarization, witnesses, county recording fees, and the minimum documentary stamp charge. Any documentary stamp tax above that minimum is separate, and I work out the figure and explain it before you proceed.
Two things make this county different from the rest of Florida, and both run through this page. One elected officer records the deed, runs the probate division and keeps the county’s books, all from the same downtown address. And a large share of the property here belongs to people who live somewhere else for part of the year — which changes the homestead analysis, the property tax analysis, and the argument for the deed itself.
| Palm Beach County | Where |
|---|---|
| Deeds and probate | Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller, 205 N. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach |
| Recording counter hours | Weekdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. · (561) 355-2991 |
| Homestead and parcel data | Property Appraiser, 301 N. Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach |
| Judicial circuit | Fifteenth — Palm Beach County alone |
| Recording, page one | $10.00, then $8.50 each later page |
| Documentary stamps | $0.70 per $100 — the standard rate |
| Lorenzo Law flat fee | $675 — the call with me, drafting, online notarization, witnesses, recording fees and the minimum documentary stamp |
| Call | (305) 224-6811 |
On this page: How it works · What it costs · The process · Where it records · Second homes and snowbirds · City by city · Talk to me
How a lady bird deed works in Palm Beach County
Three things, and each is worth stating exactly, because the differences between them are where the mistakes live.
You keep control. You can sell the property, rent it, mortgage it, change who receives it, or cancel the arrangement altogether, and you do not need a signature from anyone you named.
The property skips probate. At your death it passes to the people you named without a case being opened for it in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit. If the deed was drafted and recorded properly, and the people you named are alive and able to take, they record proof of your death with the same Clerk who recorded the deed, and for most families that is the whole procedure. Where something is wrong with the deed or with how title was held, more work is needed, and the rest of this page is about those cases.
Your homestead position is undisturbed. Properly drafted, the deed does not change who is entitled to the homestead exemption, and a deed that lists you as both grantor and grantee is designed to keep the Save Our Homes cap from resetting while you are alive.
Each of the three depends on the clause that reserves your powers. Where that language is weak, the consequences depend on the defect — a lost benefit, a completed gift, or a remainder that fails — and none of them shows on the face of a document that still records and still looks right.
What is a lady bird deed?
It is a deed you sign and record now that transfers your property at your death to the person or people you name, while reserving to you the full right to deal with the property in the meantime. Nothing about your ownership changes while you are alive. Nobody you named has a say in what you do with the home, and nobody you named can be made to sign anything.
Florida has no statute that creates this deed by name. It works because Florida law lets an owner reserve powers when conveying a future interest, and the deed is drafted to reserve them expressly. That is why the drafting carries more weight here than on an ordinary deed. My Florida lady bird deed guide explains the instrument in full; this page is about how it plays out in this county.
Is an enhanced life estate deed the same thing?
Yes. When a title examiner, a lender or the Property Appraiser’s office refers to a Palm Beach County enhanced life estate deed, this is the instrument they mean. “Enhanced” is the operative word. A plain life estate deed in Palm Beach County, or anywhere else in Florida, splits the property today: you hold a life estate, your children hold a vested remainder, and you cannot sell, mortgage or change your mind without their signatures. The enhancement is the reserved power to do all of that alone. Same family of instrument, opposite consequences.
Is a lady bird deed legal in Florida?
Yes. These deeds have been prepared and recorded in Florida for decades, the Clerk here accepts them for recording like any other deed, and title insurers write over them routinely. What varies is quality, not legality.
What is the downside of a lady bird deed in Florida?
Three real ones. First, it covers one property and nothing else, so an owner who treats the deed as an estate plan has a plan with a hole in it. Second, if the property carries a mortgage there is an unresolved documentary stamp tax question, set out below, that can run to four figures. Third, it hands the property to your beneficiaries outright at your death with no structure around it — if one of them is a spendthrift, receives needs-based benefits, or is in the middle of a divorce, outright is the wrong answer.
In this county I would add a fourth. On a second home that is not your homestead, nobody can tell you with confidence what recording the deed does to the 10% assessment cap. That question has its own section.
The disadvantages people worry about most usually turn out not to be real: the deed does not cost you control, it does not expose the property to your children’s creditors while you live, and it does not disturb your homestead exemption.
Who should not use one
Several situations where I will tell you this is the wrong tool: you have a minor child and the property is your homestead; you own it with someone else and you do not agree about where it should go; your intended beneficiary receives needs-based benefits and no trust is being used; what you own is a cooperative apartment rather than a deeded unit; you own a manufactured home on a rented lot; or the property is one asset in an estate complicated enough that a trust does the job better. Each of those comes up below.
What a lady bird deed costs here
How much does a lady bird deed cost in Palm Beach County?
$675 flat at Lorenzo Law for a standard matter, confirmed after I read your recorded deed and before any drafting begins. It is one figure rather than a drafting fee with recording, notary and witness charges added afterwards.
What is included in the $675 flat fee?
Speaking directly with me, reading the deed your property is currently held under, the drafting, online notarization, the two witnesses, the county recording fees, the minimum documentary stamp charge, and the recorded copy coming back to you with its book and page.
What it does not cover is documentary stamp tax above that minimum, which in practice means a property with a mortgage on it. That is a tax rather than a fee, and I work out the figure and explain it before you decide to proceed. The fee also does not include a title search; what I read is the recorded deed that put the property in your name, which is a narrower and more specific job.
How much should a lady bird deed cost in Florida?
Between nothing and about a thousand dollars, and the spread is not about the document. A blank form costs under forty dollars, and some sites give one away. Non-lawyer online services advertise a finished deed for around four hundred, some of them from offices in this county. Attorney-prepared flat fees in Florida run from roughly three hundred to around eight hundred and fifty, and mine sits inside that range.
What you are paying for at the upper end is the review that happens before a word is drafted, and the person who will still answer the telephone about it in three years. What you are paying for at the lower end is a document. Both are legitimate purchases. They are not the same purchase.
Do I need a lawyer to do a lady bird deed in Florida?
Not as a matter of law. A deed drafted by anyone can be valid. Whether it does what you wanted is a different question, and meeting every formal requirement is entirely compatible with a document that fails.
This is a low-cost legal document with a high cost of failure. The deed is two pages. The consequences of getting the reserved powers, a spouse’s signature or the beneficiary designation wrong are measured in probate fees, litigation or a lost benefit — and none of them surface until the person who could have fixed it has died.
Can I do my own lady bird deed in Florida?
You can. If you do, be most careful about the parts with no blank to fill in: the reserved powers, the alternates if a beneficiary dies first, the legal description taken from the recorded deed rather than the tax bill, and — if you are married and this is your homestead — your spouse’s signature.
The situations where I would urge you not to do it yourself are narrow and specific: a mortgage, a minor child, a beneficiary on needs-based benefits, a second marriage, a co-owner, a cooperative or a manufactured home, a property whose homestead status is genuinely unclear because you split the year between two states, or any doubt about the signer’s capacity. Those are not upsells. They are the fact patterns where a form produces a document that is worse than none.
Is there an official Palm Beach County lady bird deed form?
No. The Clerk publishes sample forms for the documents clerks administer, and a deed of this kind is not among them. There is no state form either, because no statute defines the instrument. Every Palm Beach County deed form you find online for this purpose, free or paid, is a private template.
Most of them get the mechanical requirements right, because those parts have blanks and the blanks are obvious. What a template cannot know is what your recorded deed says, how you hold title, whether your spouse must join, or whether the person you are naming should be receiving the interest directly at all. If what you want is to see the document itself, clause by clause, my Florida lady bird deed form page walks through it.
What a failed deed costs, against $675
It is worth being precise about where the saving comes from, because the usual version of the claim is wrong. Florida computes the presumptively reasonable attorney’s fee in a probate administration on the value of the probate estate, and protected homestead is not in that estate at all. So it is not true that this deed saves you a percentage of your house.
What is true is this: because the deed passes the property directly to the named beneficiary at your death, outside the probate process, no probate case is needed for it and no fee is ever calculated on it. For a seasonal owner the point is sharper still, because the case avoided is a second one — see the section on out-of-state owners below. The comparison worth making is not $675 against a forty-dollar form. It is $675 against what happens if the document does not work.
Lady bird deed, quitclaim deed, trust or will?
| Instrument | Control while you live | Avoids probate | Can you change your mind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lady bird deed | Full — sell, mortgage, revoke alone | Yes, for that property | Yes, alone |
| Quit claim deed to a child | Lost — they are an owner now | Depends how title is held | No, not without their signature |
| Plain life estate deed | Limited — cannot sell alone | Yes, for that property | No, not without their signature |
| Revocable living trust | Full | Yes, for everything funded into it | Yes, alone |
| Will | Full | No — a will is a probate document | Yes, alone |
Is a quit claim deed the same as a lady bird deed?
No, and the difference is the most expensive misunderstanding in this area. A quit claim deed transfers whatever interest you have, now, permanently. Sign one putting your daughter on the title and she is an owner from that day: her creditors can reach the property, her divorce can involve it, she has to sign before you can sell, and you have made a gift with a carryover basis rather than a stepped-up one.
A lady bird deed transfers nothing now. A great many people arrive at this page after searching for a quit claim deed in Palm Beach County, or for a Palm Beach County quit claim deed form, because adding a child to the title feels like the simple way to avoid probate. It is the thing I spend the most time undoing. If a quitclaim is genuinely what you need — between spouses, into a trust, to clear a name off title — my Florida quit claim deed guide covers how to fill one out and record it, and it goes to the same Clerk at the same fees set out above. The side-by-side is on my lady bird deed versus quit claim deed page.
Lady bird deed and warranty deed
Those two are not really alternatives. “Warranty” describes what the grantor promises about title, and a lady bird deed is usually drafted as an enhanced life estate warranty deed carrying those same covenants. When people compare a warranty deed with a lady bird deed they generally mean an outright transfer now, and the answer is the same as for a quitclaim: outright now, versus nothing now.
Does Florida have a transfer on death deed?
No. A transfer on death deed is a creature of statute in the states that have one, and Florida has not enacted one for real property. A search for a transfer on death deed in Palm Beach County returns either out-of-state documents or a lady bird deed described under a borrowed name. Functionally the two do a similar job. The difference is that here the result comes from reserved powers drafted into the instrument, not from a statute that tells you what the words mean — which is exactly why the drafting matters more in Florida.
Is it better to put your house in a trust or use a lady bird deed?
Different tools, and the honest answer depends on how much you own and how complicated your family is. The deed handles one property, costs a few hundred dollars, and does nothing about anything else. A trust handles everything you put into it, addresses what happens if you become incapacitated rather than only when you die, can hold land in more than one state, and costs several times as much.
If the Florida property is your main asset here and your wishes are simple, the deed is usually the better value. If you own several properties, have a blended family, want assets managed for someone after your death, or the 10% cap question worries you, the trust earns its cost. The full comparison is on my lady bird deed versus living trust page. Occasionally the answer is both.
Do I still need a will?
Yes. The deed handles one property and nothing else. A will handles everything the deed does not touch and names who administers your estate. A deed without a will leaves the rest of what you own to the intestacy statute rather than to you. The same goes for the documents that operate while you are alive — a durable power of attorney and a designation of health care surrogate — because this deed does nothing at all about the years before your death.
How this works, and how long it takes
Six steps. About a week is typical rather than promised — the timing depends on when you are free to sign and on the Clerk’s processing, and most of that week is you reading the draft.
- A call, at no charge. You tell me the property address, who is on the deed now, whether you are married, where you actually live, and who you want the property to go to. Fifteen minutes is usually enough; what to have ready is listed below.
- I pull your recorded deed from the Palm Beach County Official Records and read it — the legal description, how title is held, and the marital recitals.
- I quote the fee and confirm the scope before any drafting. If something in the recorded deed changes the picture, you hear it then rather than afterwards.
- I draft the deed and send it to you to read. Nothing is signed until you have seen it and told me it says what you meant.
- You sign. Notarization is handled online and I supply the notary and the two witnesses Florida requires. It suits most owners, but it is not automatic: before anything is scheduled I confirm what your particular signing requires and whether handling it remotely is appropriate for you. Where it is not, we arrange another way.
- I electronically record it and send you the recorded instrument with its book and page and the Clerk’s file number.
Do I have to come to an office, or go to the courthouse in West Palm Beach?
No. My offices are in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables, and I do not keep one in Palm Beach County — which is why the number on this page begins 305. For this work it makes no difference. The review happens from the recorded documents, the conversation happens by telephone or video, the signing is arranged around you, and the deed is recorded electronically. Nobody has to stand at the counter on Dixie Highway.
Can I sign a lady bird deed online?
For most owners, yes. Notarization is handled online, from a telephone or a laptop with a working camera and a photo identification, and I supply the notary and the witnesses. It is covered by the fee. It is not automatic, though, and it does not suit everyone: before anything is scheduled I confirm what your particular signing requires, and where signing online is not the right answer we arrange another way.
When does a lady bird deed take effect?
It is signed now and recorded now, and it changes nothing about your ownership now. The transfer to the people you named happens at your death, and only if you have not sold the property or revoked the deed in the meantime. That gap between recording and effect is the whole design: the public record shows your intention from day one, and you keep every right until the last one.
Who does lady bird deeds near me?
Whether you typed lady bird deed near me, asked for a lady bird deed attorney near me, or tried something narrower like lady bird deed near West Palm Beach, FL, the results are a mix of law firms, notary services and form downloads. The useful answer is that the nearest lawyer is not necessarily the one on the nearest street. The deed records with the same Clerk whoever prepares it. What is worth being close to is the county: knowing that the recording desk shuts at four while the Property Appraiser stays open until five, that a second home here is analysed differently from a homestead, and what the association of a Boca Raton or Delray Beach condominium will ask your family for afterwards.
One attorney, start to finish
I am a solo practitioner. The person who reads your deed is the person who drafts it, the person at the signing, and the person who answers when you call about it in three years. If you are comparing Palm Beach County lady bird deed attorneys, that is the difference worth weighing, and it is the reason the fee is what it is rather than lower. As a lady bird deed attorney in Florida I take matters statewide, and South Florida lady bird deed work in Broward and Miami-Dade runs on the same terms as it does here.
Se habla español
Atiendo a clientes en español. Si prefiere hablar de su escritura en español, llame al (305) 224-6811.
Signing: witnesses, notary and what the Clerk checks
Does a lady bird deed need to be notarized?
Yes, and witnessed. Section 689.01 requires two subscribing witnesses, and § 695.03 requires a proper acknowledgment before a notary or other authorized officer.
A notary is not without responsibility in this. Under section 117.107(5) a Florida notary has a duty to refuse to notarize if it appears the signer is not mentally capable of understanding the nature and effect of the document. But that duty is a floor, not a legal assessment. Nobody at the notary’s desk is weighing whether you have the capacity to make this particular disposition, and nobody there is building the record that defends it if someone challenges it years afterwards.
What are the signature and formatting requirements?
Since 1 January 2024, § 695.26 has required every signature to be backed by a printed name and a post-office address, the preparer to be identified on the face of the instrument, three inches of clear space squared off in the upper right corner of page one, and a one-by-three-inch strip in the same corner of every page after. The Clerk’s own guidance repeats the point that catches people: every deed notarized in Florida needs the witnesses’ names and the witnesses’ addresses.
The Clerk also asks for legible text on letter or legal paper, accepts no cash by mail, and limits a single receipt to twenty documents. None of that is difficult. All of it is grounds for a rejection.
What the Clerk will not check
Whether the deed works. The recording desk, and the software the e-recording vendors use, validate page size, margins, signatures and fees. Whether the person signing held the legal power to convey, whether a spouse needed to join, and whether the reserved powers are drafted strongly enough are not things anyone at the counter inspects, and no rejection notice will ever raise them. Recording a defective instrument produces a defective instrument with a stamp on it.
What gets a deed rejected by the Clerk?
Formatting rather than substance. The Clerk’s own list: a document that does not meet the statutory requirements, missing information, fees, signatures or notary details, a photocopy instead of an original, illegible text, or a non-standard page size. A rejected deed is returned rather than recorded, which means that on the day you thought it was in the public record it was in an envelope. When a recorded copy comes back, read the book and page stamp rather than filing it unopened.
I recorded a deed with a mistake. How do I fix it?
You do not edit a recorded instrument. The correction is a new document recorded on top of it — ordinarily a corrective deed that recites the book and page of the original, identifies the error, and restates the conveyance correctly, at the same recording charges.
The line is narrower than people expect. Florida’s statutory cure for a scrivener’s error, § 689.041, covers only a single error in the legal description, in a short list of categories. It does not reach names, the type of interest conveyed, or who takes the remainder. A re-signed corrective deed can fix a genuinely minor slip such as a misspelled name. A material error — one that changes who inherits, the nature of the interest, or your retained powers — needs reformation in the circuit court, which is what happened in Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of Michigan, 389 So. 3d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023), where a single word in the retained-powers clause of a lady bird deed had to be corrected by a judge. A corrective deed needs the person who signed the original. Once they have died, a court is the only route left, which is one more reason to have the deed read while they are able to sign. Bring me the recorded copy before signing anything new.
Does a lady bird deed have to be recorded?
In practical terms, yes. Under § 695.01 a conveyance that never reaches the official records gives way to creditors and to anyone who later buys the property without notice of it. An unrecorded deed in a drawer is an invitation to exactly the dispute the deed was meant to prevent. Once recorded it is a public record, like every other deed in the county.
Do I need to record it right away, or can I wait?
Record it right away. People sometimes sign a deed and hold it back, meaning to record it later or leaving it for the family to find. That throws away most of what the deed is for. A deed that surfaces for the first time after the owner has died is the one relatives challenge, the one a title examiner questions, and the one that can lose to somebody who dealt with the property in the meantime without knowing it existed. When I prepare one, recording is my job and it happens as soon as the signing is done.
Where and how a deed is recorded in Palm Beach County
Where do I record a deed in Palm Beach County?
With the Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller, at 205 N. Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. Every Palm Beach County ladybird deed ends up there or at one of its branches, whoever prepares it. The counter is open 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. on weekdays, and the recording department answers at (561) 355-2991.
That one office is unusual. It records deeds, runs the probate division, and serves as the county’s comptroller — three functions that elsewhere in Florida sit with different people. Orange County, ninety miles north, splits the first two: deeds record with the Comptroller on Church Street while probate is filed with the Clerk on North Orange Avenue, in a different building. Palm Beach puts the deed registry and the probate court at the same street address. If a transfer fails, the estate opens down the corridor rather than across town.
Is there a Palm Beach County recorder or register of deeds?
Not under that name. People who have moved here from the Northeast or the Midwest look for the Palm Beach County recorder of deeds, the register of deeds, or a registry of deeds in West Palm Beach or Boca Raton, because that is what the office was called at home. Florida has no such officer. In every Florida county the recording function belongs to the Clerk of the Circuit Court, and here that is the Clerk & Comptroller on Dixie Highway and its four branches. There is no separate deeds office for any city in the county.
Can I record at a branch instead of going downtown?
Yes — five locations take an ordinary deed. Besides the main courthouse there are counters in Delray Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Belle Glade and Royal Palm Beach, all keeping the same 8-to-4 weekday hours. A short list of specialised documents can be recorded only at the main courthouse, and an ordinary deed is not on it.
| Branch | Address | Telephone |
|---|---|---|
| Main Courthouse | 205 N. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach | (561) 355-2991 |
| South County | 200 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach | (561) 274-1588 |
| North County | 3188 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens | (561) 624-6622 |
| West County | 2950 State Road 15, Belle Glade | (561) 996-4843 |
| Royal Palm Beach | 200 Civic Center Way, Suite 400 | (561) 784-1271 |
One caution. The Property Appraiser keeps offices in the same four towns but at different addresses — in Belle Glade the Clerk is at 2950 State Road 15 and the Appraiser at 2976, and in Royal Palm Beach the Clerk is in Suite 400 while the Appraiser is in Suite 200. The Appraiser also stays open until 5 p.m. rather than 4. People arrive at the wrong counter with an hour to spare and lose the day. If the errand is a homestead application rather than a recording, it is the Appraiser you want, and the two offices do not pass paperwork between themselves.
What is the Recording Transmittal Form?
It is the Clerk’s cover sheet, and the Clerk asks for it with every paper submission. If you are recording your own deed by post, the package is the original deed, the Palm Beach County Recording Transmittal Form, payment, and a self-addressed, postage-paid envelope for the return. Ordinary mail goes to P.O. Box 4177, West Palm Beach, FL 33402. Express deliveries go to the street address, Room 4.2500. A deed that arrives without the return envelope gets recorded and then does not come back, which is the most common complaint the Clerk’s own questions-and-answers page addresses.
Can a lady bird deed be e-recorded?
Only through an approved vendor. The Clerk accepts electronic submissions around the clock but takes nothing directly — everything arrives through services such as CSC, Simplifile or Indecomm, and those accounts serve professional submitters rather than the public. It is how I file. The Clerk records in-person documents the same day; it does not promise that for mailed or electronic ones, and I do not either.
What recording costs here
What does it cost to record a deed in Palm Beach County?
Ten dollars for page one, then $8.50 a page. Names past the first four are indexed at a dollar apiece. An ordinary two-page deed with two names comes to $18.50 before the small per-description charges below, and the $675 covers all of it.
| Charge | Amount |
|---|---|
| First page, § 28.24 base plus statutory add-ons | $10.00 |
| Each later page | $8.50 |
| Each name indexed beyond the first four | $1.00 |
| First legal description | $0.60 |
| Second legal description | $0.60 |
| Each further legal description | $0.20 |
| Extra search, where the document carries no legal description | $2.00 |
| Copy from the Official Records | $1.00 per page |
| Certifying a copy | $2.00 per instrument |
The legal-description lines are a Palm Beach quirk worth knowing. The Clerk counts each lot, block, section or unit as one description, which is why a Wellington or Loxahatchee owner conveying several lots on one deed pays a little more than a condominium owner conveying a single unit. And the county adds a search fee to any instrument that arrives with no legal description at all — a small, precise penalty for the single most common defect in a downloaded deed. A parcel identified only by street address or parcel control number does not just risk failing later; it costs two dollars more on the day.
The Clerk’s recording fee calculator
The Clerk publishes a Palm Beach County recording fee calculator on its recording page, and it is the right place to check the Palm Beach County recording fees for anything other than a simple deed. On documentary stamps, a calculator applies the rate to whatever figure you type in; it cannot tell you what the taxable consideration is on a deed like this one, which is the real question and is dealt with below.
Finding your deed, and keeping an eye on it
How do I get a copy of my deed in Palm Beach County?
From the Clerk’s Official Records search. A Palm Beach County deed search runs by name rather than by street address, because the Official Records are indexed by the parties to each instrument. Search your own name, open the most recent deed into it, and read the whole image — including any exhibit carrying the legal description. If you already know the official records book and page, or the Clerk’s file number, you can go straight to the document. A plain copy is a dollar a page and certification is two dollars more, though for nearly every purpose the recorded image does the job.
You do not have to do any of this. If you cannot find your deed, I pull it, and that is inside the fee.
Clerk’s records and Property Appraiser’s records are two different systems
The distinction confuses people constantly. The Property Appraiser’s public search, which everyone here calls PAPA, is indexed by address and tells you the parcel control number, the assessed value, the exemptions on the roll and who that office believes owns the property. The Clerk’s Official Records tell you what was actually recorded and when. For your deed you need the Clerk. For your homestead status you need the Appraiser. The legal description on a new deed comes from the recorded deed, never from the PAPA summary, which is an abbreviated entry built for tax assessment.
Two disambiguations while you are there. A search for Palm Beach County tax deeds turns up the Clerk’s auction of properties sold for unpaid taxes, which has nothing to do with this instrument. And a Palm Beach County title search is a different job again: a full chain search is title work, the thing a title company or examiner does before a closing. It is not what I do and it is not part of a deed fee. If your situation calls for one, I will say so and tell you who does them.
Should I sign up for the Clerk’s Property Fraud Alert?
Yes, and the day your deed is recorded is a sensible day to do it. The Palm Beach County Property Fraud Alert is a free service from the Clerk. You register a name, and optionally an address or parcel number, and the Clerk emails you within about a day whenever a document is recorded in the Official Records that exactly matches what you registered. The email gives the document type, the Clerk’s file number and the book and page.
It notifies; it does not prevent. But a forged deed is far easier to deal with in its first week than in its third year, and owners who are away for half the year are exactly the people a forger counts on not noticing. Each owner registers separately, at the Clerk’s Property Fraud Alert page or on (561) 355-2991.
Second homes, snowbirds and out-of-state owners
This is the section that makes a Palm Beach County page different from the ones I have written for other counties. The Property Appraiser’s roll carries 662,126 parcels, of which 186,723 are condominium units, and a great many of those belong to people whose permanent home is in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut or Canada.
Can I use a Florida lady bird deed if I live in another state?
Yes. The instrument attaches to Florida land, not to the owner’s residency. A seasonal resident, a part-year snowbird and an out-of-state owner who visits twice a year can all use one. The property is Florida real estate, so Florida law governs it and it records in West Palm Beach wherever you live. What changes for a non-resident is the homestead layer, which the next questions deal with.
I live in New York and own a condo in Boca Raton. Does this still work?
It does, and it is one of the most common calls I get from this county. People ask whether a lady bird deed is legal in New York; that is the wrong question. The deed for your Boca Raton condominium is a Florida deed governed by Florida law, and New York’s rules about its own land have nothing to say about it. The converse also holds: a Florida deed cannot reach your house up north. That property is governed by the law of its own state and needs its own instrument, and owning land in two states is one of the better arguments for a trust.
Does a lady bird deed avoid ancillary probate?
Yes, as to the property it describes, and for an out-of-state owner this is the strongest version of the argument for the deed. When someone who lived elsewhere dies owning Florida real estate, their home state administers the estate and Florida still requires its own case to pass the Florida land. That second case is called ancillary administration. It means a Florida attorney, a Palm Beach County court file, authenticated copies of the home-state proceedings, and months of elapsed time — for one condominium.
A properly drafted and recorded lady bird deed avoids it for the same reason it avoids a domestic probate: title passes by operation of the deed at death, so there is nothing for a Florida court to administer. A Florida resident with this deed avoids one probate. A New Jersey resident with a Delray Beach condominium avoids a second one, in a state where the family may know nobody.
Does the homestead restriction apply to a Florida second home?
Not if you genuinely live somewhere else. The constitutional restrictions attach to the property a person actually resides in, so a vacation home or a condominium owned by someone whose permanent home is up north sits outside them.
This is the point where Palm Beach inverts the usual Florida analysis. Everywhere else on this site the homestead rules are the constraint: § 732.4015 bars devising homestead away from a surviving spouse or minor child, and a married owner cannot convey homestead without the spouse joining. On a true second home neither applies, and the deed becomes markedly simpler. The constitutional protection from creditors goes with them, though, which matters if that protection was part of the plan.
Everything else still applies. The deed needs two subscribing witnesses, the enhanced powers have to be drafted so you keep the right to sell and revoke without the beneficiaries joining, and the legal description still has to come off the recorded deed rather than the tax bill. Losing the homestead constraint removes one question from the analysis, not the analysis.
The trap: no exemption on the roll does not mean no homestead
Read this carefully, because the trap is subtle. Constitutional homestead and the property tax exemption are two different things. § 731.201 defines protected homestead by reference to the constitution, not to the tax roll. A property can be constitutional homestead even though nobody ever filed for the exemption, because the test is where the owner actually lives. Never reason from “the Property Appraiser shows no homestead exemption” to “the restrictions do not apply.” Reason from where the family sleeps.
The people this catches are the ones in transition: the couple who have quietly become full-time Floridians without changing anything on paper, and the widow who stopped going north three winters ago. If that might be you, say so on the first call. It decides which half of this page applies.
Does a lady bird deed reset the 10% cap on a non-homestead property?
This is genuinely unsettled, and it is the question this county raises more than any other. Non-homestead residential property is capped at 10% annual assessment growth under § 193.1554, and that cap resets to just value after a change of ownership.
The reason for caution is a difference between two statutes that most pages never mention. § 193.155, which governs homestead, carves out a long list of transfers that do not count — including where the same person remains entitled to the exemption, and transfers by operation of law at death. The non-homestead provision carries a much shorter list: correcting an error, moving between legal and equitable title, transfers between spouses, and dissolution of marriage.
The statute defines a change of ownership as any sale, foreclosure, or transfer of legal title or beneficial title in equity to any person, and it contains no exception written for this deed. The courts have not been generous with the list either: in S & A Property Investment Services, LLC v. Garcia, 360 So. 3d 432 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023), a quitclaim from two individuals to their own wholly owned company was held to be a change of ownership, and the court declined to add an exception the Legislature had not written.
No Florida appellate decision, Department of Revenue rule or advisement decides whether recording an enhanced life estate deed is a change of ownership for that purpose. Anyone telling you confidently either way is guessing. On a homestead the question barely arises. On an oceanfront condominium carrying years of accumulated cap benefit, it is the one worth asking first, and sometimes it is the reason to use a different instrument.
One date to watch. Amendment 3 on the 3 November 2026 ballot would, if at least 60% of voters approve it, lower the non-homestead cap from 10% to 5% from 1 January 2027. That would make an accumulated cap more valuable, and the unanswered question above more expensive to get wrong. I will update this section once the result is known.
Why the county’s homestead page mentions New York
Because of who buys here. The Property Appraiser requires that an applicant hold no residency-based benefit elsewhere, and names New York’s Rollback, STAR and Enhanced STAR programmes specifically. A Florida county naming another state’s tax programmes in its own eligibility rules is the seasonal economy showing up in the paperwork. It also signals what the office is watching for: someone claiming a Florida exemption while still claiming one up north.
If the plan is to make Palm Beach County your permanent residence and pass the property to your children, the exemption and the deed need to be sequenced in that order, not the reverse.
What about a rental or investment property?
The deed works on a rental, a duplex or an investment property the same way it works on a residence, and none of the homestead constraints apply. Three things change. The constitutional creditor protection is absent. The federal rule that stops a lender calling a loan due on certain family transfers is written for owner-occupied residential property, so a mortgaged rental needs a closer look. And the 10% cap question above applies in full.
A note for Canadian and other foreign owners
Nothing about the deed turns on citizenship. What does turn on it is tax, later: when a foreign person sells United States real estate, federal law requires the buyer to withhold part of the price. That does not bite when you sign the deed, but it can bite when your beneficiary sells, if the beneficiary is also a foreign person. Say so on the first call. It changes nothing about whether the deed works and quite a lot about what should be planned around it.
Homestead, when Palm Beach County is home
If you live here year-round, the constitutional homestead rules are fully in play, and they are the constraint on this deed.
Will a lady bird deed affect my homestead exemption?
Properly drafted, no. You are left holding a life estate together with the power to sell, mortgage or revoke without anyone’s consent, so nothing about your entitlement to the exemption changes. For the Save Our Homes cap, section 193.155(3)(a)1.c provides that there is no change of ownership where the owner is listed as both grantor and grantee and others are additionally named as grantees, which is why the deed should convey the life estate to you by name. A deed in which the owner appears only as grantor and reserves a life estate does not fit that exception on its text, and no Florida appellate court has yet applied the exception to a lady bird deed.
The administrative side deserves one sentence of care. The Property Appraiser will see a recorded change on the title, and offices sometimes want to hear from the owner when that happens. The sensible sequence is to record the deed and then confirm with the exemptions staff on (561) 355-3230 that the exemption and the cap are undisturbed on the roll. Five minutes in February beats a surprise on the TRIM notice in August.
What if I miss the March 1 homestead deadline?
Missing the March 1 deadline is not automatically fatal, but the second chance is a procedure you have to ask for rather than a grace period that runs on its own. File a late application directly with the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser before the twenty-fifth day after the county mails its annual assessment notices. The appraiser can still grant the exemption for that year if you show you were unable to file on time or had other extenuating circumstances. If the appraiser says no, you can take it to the Value Adjustment Board by that same deadline, with a $15 nonrefundable filing fee and the same showing to make.
Does my spouse have to sign?
If the property is your Florida homestead and you are married, yes. Florida’s Constitution requires a spouse to join in transferring homestead property, and a deed the spouse did not join is not effectual to convey it. A waiver of homestead rights in a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement does not solve this: the statutory deed waiver under § 732.7025 waives only the restriction on devise, and by its own terms may not be treated as a waiver of the restriction on alienation.
If the property was bought before you married, bring the closing file. Whether your spouse has to join turns on facts that predate the marriage.
Can my spouse and I sign one deed together?
Yes, and for a married couple who own the home together it is the ordinary way to do it. Both of you sign as grantors and both of you keep the reserved powers. The deed is usually drafted so that the property stays with the survivor first and passes to the named beneficiaries only when both of you have died — because a deed that sends the home to the children on the first death leaves the surviving spouse in a position nobody intended.
What if I have a minor child?
Then talk to me before recording anything. Section 732.4017 says a lifetime transfer of homestead is not a devise, which would take a deed outside the constitutional restriction — but that safe harbor applies only where the owner keeps no power to revoke or revest the interest, and a retained power to wipe out the remainder is precisely what makes this deed what it is. The better reading is that the safe harbor is not available to it, and no Florida appellate court has yet decided the point on a lady bird deed by name.
The practical position is that the test is applied at your death, not at signing. If no minor child survives you, the restriction does not reach the deed. If one does, the remainder fails and § 732.401 decides where the home goes instead. Nobody can guarantee which of those happens, which is why I will not build a plan on this deed alone while there is a minor child.
Who counts as a “minor child” is narrower than most people assume. It means someone under eighteen who is your child under Florida’s Probate Code — a biological child, a child you adopted, or a child born out of wedlock who meets the paternity requirements. It does not mean a stepchild you never adopted, a foster child, a grandchild, or any remoter descendant: section 731.201(3) expressly excludes a grandchild or a more remote descendant from the word “child,” and the Florida Supreme Court held in In re McGinty’s Estate, 258 So. 2d 450 (Fla. 1971), that “minor child” in the Constitution is a substantially different class from “lineal descendants.” Where the child lives is not part of the test either. In Deem’s Estate v. Shinn, 297 So. 2d 611 (Fla. 4th DCA 1974), a father’s minor daughter lived with her mother in another state and he had never actually supported her — the restriction applied anyway, because he still owed her the legal obligation. One question is genuinely open: whether a minor grandchild whose own parent died before you can trigger the restriction. No Florida court has decided it.
If this is a second marriage
Raise it at the start. A surviving spouse in Florida may elect a share of the elective estate, and the statute that defines it, § 732.2035, reaches property the decedent transferred that remained revocable by the decedent alone. A lady bird deed is revocable by you alone. No Florida court has applied that to a lady bird deed remainder, so I am not going to tell you how it comes out. If your spouse is not the person you are naming, plan as though it applies.
Property tax: Save Our Homes, portability and basis
| Palm Beach County Property Appraiser | Detail |
|---|---|
| Main office | 301 N. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach · (561) 355-3230 |
| Hours | Weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. |
| Homestead deadline | 1 March, with eligibility tested at 1 January |
| Late filing | available, closing in mid-September |
| Portability form | DR-501T, due 1 March |
| Portability ceiling | $500,000 |
| Save Our Homes cap | the lower of 3% or CPI |
| Parcels on the roll | 662,126, of which 186,723 are condominium units |
Will my property taxes go up because of the deed?
On a homestead, no. Save Our Homes caps annual increases in assessed value, and a properly drafted enhanced life estate deed, one that lists you as both grantor and grantee, is designed to leave the cap in place while you are alive. After the owner’s death, the property is generally reassessed at just value on January 1 of the following year unless a statutory preservation exception applies, and whether the beneficiary qualifies for a homestead exemption of their own is a separate question. That is true whether the home passes by deed, by will or by intestacy, so it is not a cost of doing this.
If you brought a Save Our Homes benefit with you from another Florida county, that portability is designed to be unaffected during your lifetime by a deed that lists you as both grantor and grantee. It is worth mentioning on the first call, because the paperwork proving it is easier to produce now than later.
On a second home or a rental the question is different, because the cap is different: see the 10% cap question above, which nobody can yet answer with confidence.
Do my children keep my Save Our Homes cap after I die?
Two points here are where families lose the benefit. The first is that the protection is yours, not your beneficiary’s: your death is the change of ownership, and the assessment resets to just value on the following January 1 unless that person independently fits one of the statute’s own exceptions — a surviving spouse, a permanent resident who was legally or naturally dependent on you, a surviving joint tenant with rights of survivorship who was entitled to and receiving the homestead exemption on the property and continues to qualify for and receive it, or descent by operation of law to a surviving spouse or minor child under section 732.401. The dependency exception is read narrowly: in Willens v. Garcia, 53 So. 3d 1113 (Fla. 3d DCA 2011), an able-bodied adult son who had been his stroke-bound father’s full-time caretaker for twenty years did not qualify. The second is a trap written into the statute itself. If a person named as an additional grantee applies for a homestead exemption on the property while you are still alive, that application is itself treated as a change of ownership and destroys the cap you have accumulated. Nobody named in your deed should apply until after your death.
Do my heirs get a step-up in basis?
Yes, and it is one of the deed’s real advantages over adding a child to the title. Because you keep possession for life and keep the power to revoke, the property is included in your gross estate, and that inclusion is what produces the adjustment to its full date-of-death value. If your beneficiaries sell soon after your death for close to that value, there is little or no capital gains tax to pay. Nothing is given away during your lifetime, so there is no gift tax return to file either. My page on lady bird deed tax consequences goes through the mechanics, including the one-year trap where the beneficiary originally gave you the property.
Have the date-of-death value appraised rather than taken off the tax roll. On capped property in particular, the roll is a long way from fair market value.
Documentary stamps and the mortgage
Does a lady bird deed trigger documentary stamp tax in Palm Beach County?
On an unencumbered property given for no consideration, only the minimum, and that is inside my fee. Palm Beach County doc stamps are charged at the ordinary $0.70 per $100; Miami-Dade is the only Florida county on a different figure. There is no separate Palm Beach County transfer tax on top of it.
You will find pages citing the Department of Revenue’s Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004, which reasoned that no present beneficial interest changes hands because the remainder stays contingent while the life tenant lives. Two limits belong with that. § 213.22 gives an advisement no precedential value except to the taxpayer who requested it, and then only for the transaction it addressed. And § 201.02 treats an outstanding mortgage as consideration even where nobody assumes the debt.
Can I do a lady bird deed if I have a mortgage?
Yes. A mortgage does not prevent the deed. It affects two things: the documentary stamp figure, and whether your lender could react. A home equity line counts here as well. A HELOC is secured by a recorded mortgage, so raise it on the first call the same way. For the tax on a deed, what counts is the balance outstanding when the deed is recorded, not the credit limit.
On the tax, the general rule is not in doubt: the mortgage balance counts as consideration. What has never been decided is the arithmetic for this particular instrument, which conveys a remainder while you keep a life estate. Whether the full balance is the tax base, or whether it should be apportioned between the two interests, has not been decided by any Florida court or addressed in any published advisement. So I do not publish a figure. On a mortgaged property I tell you what the Department would most likely assess, tell you plainly that the calculation is unsettled, and recommend a written tax opinion before recording if the balance is large enough to matter.
Will the bank call the loan due?
It may be entitled to. I have not seen a Florida lender accelerate a loan over one of these deeds, but that is experience, and the legal position underneath it is less comfortable than most pages admit. The federal Garn-St. Germain Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3, lists the transfers on which a lender may not enforce a due-on-sale clause, and recording a lady bird deed during your lifetime does not fall within any of them. What makes the practical risk low is that a lender gains nothing by acting: you still live there, you still own it, and you still owe the debt.
Your beneficiaries are protected at your death only if they are relatives who will occupy the property. An adult child in another state who intends to sell or rent a mortgaged condominium should expect to deal with the loan promptly. You can still refinance after the deed is recorded; you kept the power to mortgage without anyone’s consent, and where a lender unfamiliar with the instrument asks the beneficiaries to sign anyway, a short letter usually resolves it.
Does a lady bird deed work with a reverse mortgage?
Stop before you record anything, and tell me. A federally insured reverse mortgage runs on 24 C.F.R. § 206.27, under which the balance becomes due if the borrower conveys all of their title — and a borrower who keeps a life estate has not done that. So the deed does not, by itself, mature the loan. The exposure is elsewhere: these loan documents routinely require the lender’s consent before any conveyance, and recording without it can be a breach. Get the lender’s written consent first. Not afterwards.
Condominiums, co-ops, 55+ communities and other property types
| What you own | Does a lady bird deed work? |
|---|---|
| House on land you own | Yes |
| Deeded condominium unit | Yes — read the declaration first |
| Home in an HOA or country-club community | Yes — the deed moves title, not a club membership |
| Several lots or parcels | Yes, on one deed or several |
| Rental, investment or commercial property | Yes, without the homestead layer |
| Vacant land | Yes |
| Property titled in an LLC or a trust | Not in your own name — the record owner has to sign |
| Manufactured home, you own the land, RP decal issued | Yes, together with the land |
| Manufactured home on a rented lot | No — assign the certificate of title instead |
| Cooperative apartment | No — assign the shares and lease; undecided in Florida |
Does my condominium association have to approve the deed?
Nothing happens while you are alive — no possession moves and no unit changes hands — so there is ordinarily nothing for an association to approve at signing. The open question is what happens at your death. Many declarations carve out transfers occurring at death or by operation of law, and where yours does, the association has nothing to approve. Where it does not, the association has an argument, and no Florida appellate court has decided whether an approval clause or a right of first refusal can reach a transfer under a deed like this. So I ask for the declaration before recording rather than telling you it does not apply.
One thing that is settled: unpaid assessments follow the unit. Under § 718.116 for a condominium and § 720.3085 for a homeowners’ association, the person taking title is liable for assessments coming due while they own it and jointly liable with the previous owner for what went unpaid before. Whoever inherits should expect the association to want a death certificate, the recorded deed and its own forms before it updates its books.
Who pays the condominium assessments after the owner dies?
If the property is a condominium, there is a point nobody warns about and it costs more than any approval question. Under section 718.116(1)(a) a unit owner is liable for assessments regardless of how title was acquired, and is jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for everything unpaid up to the transfer of title. In Coastal Creek Condominium Association v. FLA Trust Services LLC, 275 So. 3d 836 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019), the First District held that this reaches unpaid assessments going back beyond the immediate prior owner. Your beneficiary inherits that liability with the unit and has thirty days after the transfer of title to pay it. Section 718.116(1)(c) is where that thirty-day clock sits, and it belongs to condominiums alone. In a homeowners’ association, section 720.3085(2) makes the new owner jointly and severally liable for what the previous owner left unpaid, but it sets no thirty-day deadline. Whoever takes the unit should ask for an estoppel certificate straight away.
What about a 55+ community?
The deed works there as it does anywhere. The question to ask is about the person inheriting. Age-restricted communities regulate who may live in a home, and whether a forty-year-old heir may move in, rent the unit out, or must sell is answered by the community’s governing documents rather than by the deed. It is worth knowing before you name someone who is counting on living there.
Can I use a lady bird deed for a co-op?
This is the hard case, and the older buildings along the coast here include a fair number of cooperatives. Florida law treats an interest in a cooperative unit as an interest in real property, but what you actually hold is shares or a membership in the corporation together with a proprietary lease, and legal title to the building sits with the corporation. Transfer happens by assignment of the shares and the lease, subject to board approval. No Florida statute, rule or decision addresses whether a lady bird deed can be used for a co-op at all. So it is not the right tool, and if you own one the planning belongs in a different document.
What about a manufactured or mobile home?
Only when the home has become real property, which takes more than being parked permanently: you own the land, the home is permanently affixed, and the Property Appraiser has assessed it as real property, after which the tax collector issues the RP decal. If you own the home but rent the lot, a lady bird deed conveys nothing, and I would rather say so than take a fee for drafting one. That home transfers by assignment of its certificate of title.
Vacant land, commercial property and short-term rentals
The instrument is not limited to a house. A vacant lot in The Acreage, a small commercial building or a warehouse unit can pass the same way, and none of the homestead layer applies to any of them. Two cautions. The federal rule that restrains a lender from calling a loan due on certain family transfers is written for residential property of fewer than five units, so a mortgaged commercial parcel needs its loan documents read first. And a condominium let by the week or the month through Airbnb or a similar service is a rental for every purpose on this page — check the association’s leasing rules as well, because whoever inherits will be bound by them.
What if the property is already in an LLC or a trust?
Then you are not the owner of record, and a deed has to come from whoever is. If the property is titled in your revocable trust, the trust is already doing this job and a lady bird deed on top of it adds nothing. If it is titled in a limited liability company, the company holds the land. A member has no interest in any specific company property, a deed you sign in your own name does not convey it, and what you own is the membership interest, which is personal property and belongs in a different document. People sometimes ask me to move a rental out of an LLC so that it can pass by deed. That can be done, but it gives up whatever the company was set up to achieve, so it is a conversation rather than a form.
If the property is already held by a trust or an LLC, one drafting point decides whether the deed works at all. A trust is not a legal entity in Florida, so the deed names the trustee rather than the trust. An LLC is different: it is a legal entity and holds title in its own name, so what matters there is that the right person signs for it, in the right capacity. If you are considering moving your home into an LLC, know what it costs: the Florida Constitution exempts homestead owned by a natural person, so a residence titled in a company has no protection from forced sale, no homestead exemption and no Save Our Homes cap. And it must identify the trust by name and date: under section 689.07 a deed that adds only the word trustee, without naming the trust or its date, hands the trustee the property in fee simple with full power to sell and encumber it — the opposite of what was intended, and a problem nobody notices until the property is being sold. The fee-simple result is not automatic, though. The presumption gives way where the deed shows in some other way that a trust was intended, or where a declaration of trust by that trustee is already recorded in the county: Raborn v. Menotte, 974 So. 2d 328 (Fla. 2008). Subsection (4) also lets a beneficiary enforce the trust against the trustee whether or not the trust was recorded first. That protection has a limit worth knowing: a buyer or lender who deals with the trustee for value, without notice of the trust, before the declaration of trust is recorded in the county, takes free and clear of the beneficiaries.
Can I use a lady bird deed for a timeshare?
Rarely worth it. A deeded timeshare week is real property and a points or right-to-use membership is a contract, so the first question is which one you hold. Either way the interest is usually worth less than the cost of dealing with it properly, and the more useful conversation is about how to dispose of it during your lifetime.
Who owns it, who you name, and what can go wrong
The shape of the ownership decides most of the difficult questions, and this is the part a form has no way to handle.
What if I own the property with someone I am not married to?
Two siblings, a parent and an adult child, two friends who bought a condominium together. It can be done, and how depends entirely on how the existing title reads. If you hold as joint tenants with right of survivorship, the survivorship already governs the first death and the deed is drafted around it. If you hold as tenants in common, each of you controls only your own share and each of you decides separately where it goes. Neither of you can bind the other. A married couple is different again: spouses ordinarily hold as tenants by the entirety, both sign, and the section on spouses above applies.
This is one of the places where reading the recorded deed first earns its keep. Florida does not presume survivorship between co-owners who are not married, so two names on a deed with nothing more usually means a tenancy in common, whatever the two of you intended when you bought.
Should I just add my child to the deed instead?
This is the thing people do without asking anyone, and the question I hear as how to add someone to a deed in Palm Beach County. Mechanically it is a quit claim deed and a recording fee. In substance it is a present gift of a share of your home. It exposes the property to your child’s creditors, spouse and bankruptcy. It requires their signature before you can sell or refinance. And it gives them a carryover basis rather than a stepped-up one, which can mean a large capital gains bill on a property that would otherwise have passed with none. A lady bird deed gets the property to the same person at your death without any of that.
What if my beneficiary has creditors of their own?
Your beneficiary’s creditors are a different question from your own. Once the house passes to them it is their asset, and their judgment creditors can look to it.
One exception runs the other way. If your beneficiary takes the house and makes it their own Florida homestead, ordinary judgment creditors cannot reach it — the homestead exemption protects against every type of claim and judgment except the three the constitution itself names (Osborne v. Dumoulin, 55 So. 3d 577 (Fla. 2011)) — and a claim for equitable distribution in their divorce does not reach it either, absent fraud (Roth v. Roth, 973 So. 2d 580 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008)). Two things still do. Child support arrears reach it by way of an equitable lien a court imposes. So does a federal tax lien, which Florida homestead does not defeat at all, because the Supremacy Clause lets federal law override a state exemption — Weitzner v. United States, 309 F.2d 45 (5th Cir. 1962); and see United States v. Rodgers, 461 U.S. 677 (1983) and United States v. Craft, 535 U.S. 274 (2002). If your beneficiary does not live there, none of that protection applies.
What happens if a beneficiary dies before me?
This is the failure the free forms produce most often. Where a beneficiary dies first and no alternate was named, that share can be left with nowhere to go, which pushes the property — or a fraction of it — into the probate case the deed existed to prevent. The fix is a clause naming who takes instead. It costs nothing to include and it is the single most valuable line in the document.
Do my beneficiaries have any rights while I am alive?
None that can get in your way. They cannot stop you selling, they cannot borrow against the property, and their creditors cannot reach it. They hold an expectation, not an asset. After your death they own it outright, with all the exposure that carries — including any judgment already recorded against them. Florida’s homestead protection is personal to the occupant and does not pass with the land, so a son in New Jersey who inherits your West Palm Beach house and does not move in takes property that was shielded the day before and exposed the day after.
Naming several children
Common and straightforward on the page. The consequence to think about is that on your death they own the property together, and every decision then needs all of them. With a Florida condominium and three children in three northern states, that usually means a sale, and it is kinder to say so in advance than to leave them to discover it. Where co-owners cannot agree, Florida’s answer is a partition action, which sells the property and spends part of the proceeds doing it.
What if a beneficiary receives disability benefits?
Say so before anything is drafted. A remainder interest arriving at death can disqualify someone from SSI or Medicaid, and the fix has to be built into the deed rather than applied afterwards. The usual answer is not to abandon the deed but to direct that person’s share to a special needs trust drafted for the purpose, so the property still avoids probate while the benefit survives. The trust has to exist and the deed has to name it correctly — a deed pointing at a trust that was never signed conveys to nothing. This is one of the few situations where a free form is not merely riskier than a drafted deed but actively harmful, because it will do exactly what it is told and nobody finds out until the benefits stop.
How does a lady bird deed affect Medicaid eligibility?
On the better reading it does not create a transfer penalty, and that is one of the main reasons the instrument exists. A penalty arises from giving assets away. Because you keep the power to revoke and to sell for your own benefit, you have not given anything away. That protection is a direct consequence of the reserved powers being drafted correctly: a deed that fails as a lady bird deed is a completed gift, and a completed gift inside the look-back period is exactly the problem the deed was supposed to avoid.
After death, Florida’s Medicaid estate recovery programme under § 409.9101 works by filing a claim in a probate proceeding, so property that passes by a working deed never enters the estate the claim is made against.
Can I change or revoke a lady bird deed?
Yes, by you, alone, as often as you like — that is the enhancement the name refers to. But the deed is a recorded instrument, and undoing it takes another recorded instrument: either a deed of revocation or a new enhanced life estate deed that supersedes the first, recorded with the same Clerk at the same charges. What you should not do is record nothing and assume the old deed is dead, because the record will say otherwise. If you divorce, revise it. Unlike a will, no statute automatically reads a former spouse out of a recorded deed.
Can I still sell or refinance?
Yes, alone, at any time, to anyone. You do not need a signature from anyone named in the deed and you do not owe them any part of the proceeds. When the property sells, the deed simply ceases to matter. If a title agent asks for the beneficiaries’ signatures anyway, that is unfamiliarity rather than law.
Can a lady bird deed be contested?
It can be challenged on the familiar grounds: that the signer lacked capacity, that someone exerted undue influence, that the signature was forged, or that the deed was not properly executed. A homestead challenge is also possible where a spouse did not join or a minor child survived. What makes these deeds durable is that they are signed while the owner is alive and able to explain them, and recorded promptly. What makes one vulnerable is the opposite: signed late, by someone frail, at the urging of the person who benefits. I cover this on my page on whether a lady bird deed can be contested in Florida.
Capacity: the window that closes
The most common call I get about these deeds is from an adult child, about a parent, and it comes six months later than it should have. In this county the child is usually calling from another state.
Can my parent still sign if their memory is failing?
Possibly. A diagnosis is not the test, and a person with dementia is not automatically unable to sign a deed. What matters is whether, at the moment of signing, they understand what the document does and what they own. That can be true on a Tuesday and not on a Thursday. What I do in those situations is speak with the person alone, take my own view, and document it — and if the answer is no, I say so rather than record something that will be attacked later. A deed signed by someone who lacked capacity is not a plan. It is a lawsuit with a delay built in.
What happens if they lose capacity before we sign?
Then the deed is off the table, and the options narrow to what someone else is already authorized to do on their behalf, or to a guardianship. Both are more expensive than the deed would have been, a guardianship is slower, public and court-supervised, and neither gives the family the same freedom. If you are reading this about a parent whose memory has started to slip, the time to call is now.
Can my power of attorney sign it for me?
Sometimes, and two separate Florida statutes both have to be satisfied first. The details are on my page about whether a power of attorney can sign a lady bird deed in Florida. Bring me the document and I will read it before anyone signs. Amending it while the principal still has capacity is simple, and impossible afterwards.
After the owner dies
What happens at the Clerk’s counter after the owner dies?
The deed’s own terms govern who takes at your death; recording evidence of the death documents that change in the public records. In the ordinary case that means a certified death certificate and a short affidavit identifying the life tenant and the recorded deed, filed into the same Official Records, and no probate case is opened for the property and no judge is involved. Where the deed was defective, a named beneficiary died first, or title was held differently from what the family assumed, further documents or a court proceeding may be needed — which is why the next paragraphs exist. My page on what to do with a lady bird deed after death in Florida sets out the steps.
It is a short errand, and it is where a defective deed finally announces itself. If the remainder beneficiaries were named loosely, if one of them died first with no alternate, or if the legal description does not match the recorded chain, the family discovers it standing at the counter with a death certificate in hand. Nothing about that moment is fixable by the person who signed the deed. An hour spent on one of these instruments before signing costs a fraction of the equivalent hour after a funeral, when the remaining options have narrowed to litigation or acceptance.
If you are the one who has inherited and you want someone to read the recorded deed and tell you what it did, I offer a $475 flat-fee review of the recorded deed you supply, plus a 30-minute consultation with me to explain what the deed provides and the appropriate next steps. It is not a title search. Preparing or recording documents, and any further representation, are separately scoped and quoted.
How do I remove a deceased owner from a deed in Palm Beach County?
It depends on how the deceased owner held title, and the recorded deed answers that. If they held a life estate under a lady bird deed, or were a joint owner with right of survivorship or a spouse holding by the entirety, title passed automatically at the moment of death and no new deed is needed. To show that on the public record, the survivor or the named beneficiary records a certified death certificate in the Official Records, usually with a short supporting affidavit. That is enough for most purposes, though a title insurer or a lender may ask for more depending on the circumstances. If they held alone, or as a tenant in common, their share is in their estate and only a probate can move it. Nobody can sign a deed on behalf of a person who has died.
Florida imposes no estate tax on anyone who died on or after 1 January 2005, and under § 198.32(3) no estate tax lien attaches to those estates in the first place. A title examiner on a later sale may still ask for the Department of Revenue’s Form DR-312, the Affidavit of No Florida Estate Tax Due, to be recorded as a precaution; where a federal estate tax return is required the form is DR-313 instead. One wrinkle is worth knowing. The statute names only a personal representative as the person who signs it, and where the property passed by a lady bird deed and no probate was ever opened there is no personal representative. Neither the statute nor the rule names anyone else. Title underwriters have accepted the form signed by the person who inherited, but that is underwriting practice rather than anything the statute says, so ask the closing agent what they want before you record one.
What changes for the person who inherits?
The homestead exemption does not travel with the property, and for most heirs the Save Our Homes cap does not either. Section 193.155(3) contains exceptions that may preserve the existing assessment, including certain transfers to a surviving spouse, a permanent resident who was legally or naturally dependent on the deceased owner, and qualifying surviving joint owners with rights of survivorship. Each exception has its own requirements; confirm with the Property Appraiser whether one applies before assuming the assessment will reset. Everyone else applies in their own right. Eligibility is measured at 1 January and the ordinary deadline is 1 March; the Property Appraiser’s homestead page is the place to confirm your own eligibility and ask about late filing. If nobody who qualifies moves in, there is no exemption, the cap resets, and the assessment changes at the following 1 January. Beneficiaries who inherit a condominium should also expect the association to want its own paperwork. A deed that transfers cleanly still leaves administrative work. It simply keeps that work out of court.
Which court takes the probate if the deed fails?
The Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, which covers Palm Beach County and nothing else. § 26.021 composes it of this county alone — unlike the Ninth, which spans Orange and Osceola, or the Nineteenth next door, which takes in Martin and St. Lucie among others.
A single-county circuit makes practice predictable: one set of local procedures, one probate division, and the same building that recorded the deed. Probate services also run from the Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens courthouses. Note that probate filings go to a different post office box from recordings, which is a small thing that delays a surprising number of first filings. If what you are facing is an estate rather than a deed, my Palm Beach County probate page is the one to read, and my page on when probate is not necessary in Florida covers the shorter routes, including summary administration. The circuit publishes its own probate checklists and forms, and my Palm Beach County probate court page explains how to use them and what the filing fees are.
Palm Beach County, city by city
The law is the same in all thirty-nine municipalities and across the unincorporated county. One Clerk, one fee schedule, one Property Appraiser, one circuit. What differs from place to place is the housing, and the housing is what shapes the deed.
Boca Raton
Most of what I see from Boca Raton is condominiums and homes in country-club communities, owned by people who spent their working lives in the Northeast. A Boca Raton ladybird deed therefore tends to raise the second-home questions above before anything else: where do you actually live, and is there a homestead exemption anywhere. The communities west of the city — Boca West, Broken Sound, the Polo Club — add one more. Many tie a club membership to the home, with its own transfer rules and fees. The deed moves the title. It does not move the membership, and whoever inherits should read the club documents before deciding whether to keep or sell.
Century Village, west of the city, is the other end of the market: a very large 55-and-over condominium community where the unit may be worth less than a contested probate would cost. That is exactly where a lady bird deed in Boca Raton earns its fee, and it is the reason most people looking for a Boca Raton lady bird deed attorney are really looking for someone to keep a modest unit out of court. The nearest recording counter is the South County branch in Delray Beach, and for an estate rather than a deed my Boca Raton probate page applies. Boca also sits on the county line: cross into Deerfield Beach and you are in Broward, where my Broward County lady bird deed page takes over.
Boynton Beach
Boynton Beach is where many of the county’s active-adult communities are: the Valencia developments, Leisureville, Indian Spring, and gated neighbourhoods such as Aberdeen, Canyon Lakes and Hunters Run, most of them west of the city in the unincorporated county. A Boynton Beach ladybird deed is usually a single-family home or villa inside a homeowners’ association, held by a married couple or a surviving spouse, with adult children elsewhere.
Two things are worth checking first. If you are comparing a Boynton Beach lady bird deed lawyer with a form, these are the questions that separate them. If the community is age-restricted, find out whether the child you are naming could live there or would have to sell. And if both spouses are on the title, the deed should keep the home with the survivor before it goes to anyone else. For an estate that is already open, see my Boynton Beach probate page.
Delray Beach
Delray Beach has its own courthouse, at 200 W. Atlantic Avenue, which takes recordings and offers probate services, so a Delray owner never needs to drive to West Palm Beach for either. West of the city, Kings Point is a very large 55-and-over condominium community, and most of the Delray Beach ladybird deed calls I take begin there or somewhere like it: a modest unit, a widowed owner, and children in New York or New Jersey who would otherwise face an ancillary probate for a property worth less than the legal fees. If you want a ladybird deed lawyer in Delray Beach for that situation, the call is free. If the matter is already an estate, my Delray Beach probate page covers it.
West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach is the county seat. The Clerk’s main recording counter is on North Dixie Highway and the Property Appraiser is a short walk away on North Olive, which makes it the one city where both errands can be done on foot in a morning. The housing runs from historic neighbourhoods near the water to Century Village on the west side and gated communities such as Ibis further out, so a West Palm Beach ladybird deed can be almost anything: a homestead with a spouse to join, a seasonal condominium, or a rental. You do not need a West Palm Beach lady bird deed lawyer with an office downtown for any of it, for the reasons given above. You do need one who knows the two offices close an hour apart.
Lake Worth Beach, Lantana and the central county
The city renamed itself Lake Worth Beach in 2019, but a “Lake Worth” mailing address still covers a wide stretch of the unincorporated county, and the same is true on a smaller scale around Greenacres, Palm Springs, Lantana, Hypoluxo, Atlantis, Lake Clarke Shores and Haverhill. None of that matters to the deed, which records county-wide. It does matter when you look for your parcel, so search PAPA by address rather than guessing the municipality. A Lake Worth ladybird deed often involves an older cottage or a small apartment building, and the older waterfront buildings here are where cooperatives turn up. If what you hold is shares and a proprietary lease rather than a deed, read the co-op section above before going further.
Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter and the north county
The North County courthouse at 3188 PGA Boulevard takes recordings for Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, Juno Beach, Tequesta, North Palm Beach, Lake Park and Riviera Beach, including Singer Island, Palm Beach Shores and Jupiter Inlet Colony. A Riviera Beach ladybird deed or a North Palm Beach ladybird deed records there on the same terms as anywhere else in the county. The club communities — PGA National, BallenIsles, Mirasol, Frenchman’s Reserve — raise the same membership question as west Boca. For a Palm Beach Gardens ladybird deed or a Jupiter ladybird deed the more common complication is a second property: the owner also has a place in the Carolinas or the Northeast, and one Florida deed cannot cover both.
Check the county before anything else if your address says Tequesta or Jupiter. The Martin County line runs through that area, a parcel on the far side of it records in Stuart rather than here, and a deed recorded in the wrong county protects nobody. The Property Appraiser’s record for the address settles it in a minute.
Wellington, Royal Palm Beach and the western communities
The Royal Palm Beach branch, at 200 Civic Center Way, serves Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee Groves, Westlake, The Acreage and the rest of the western communities. Equestrian and acreage property is the local feature, and it shows up in the deed as several legal descriptions rather than one: adjoining lots bought at different times, or a barn parcel separate from the house. A Wellington ladybird deed, or a Royal Palm Beach ladybird deed on a larger lot, has to describe every parcel you mean to include, exactly as each was conveyed to you. Leaving one out is how families end up with a house that passed cleanly and a paddock that needs a probate. It is also why the Clerk’s per-description charge exists.
The Town of Palm Beach and the barrier-island towns
On the island, and in South Palm Beach, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge, Gulf Stream and Highland Beach, the typical property is seasonal, valuable, and not the owner’s homestead. The homestead constraints fall away and the 10% cap question moves to the front. On a property that has been capped for fifteen years, the difference between assessed value and market value can be large enough that the assessment question deserves an answer before the probate question does. Often the right instrument here is a trust rather than a deed, and I would rather tell you that than sell you the cheaper document.
Belle Glade, Pahokee and the Glades
The West County courthouse at 2950 State Road 15 in Belle Glade takes recordings for Pahokee, South Bay and Canal Point as well. The issue I see most in the Glades is not the new deed but the old one. Family land has often passed from one generation to the next without a probate, so the name on the last recorded deed belongs to someone who died years ago. A lady bird deed can only convey what the signer holds of record. Where the record stops at a grandparent, the estate work has to come first, and I will tell you that on the first call rather than draft something that conveys nothing.
Beyond the county line
South of here, my Broward County page covers that county’s recording office, and the Miami page covers the only county that pays a different documentary stamp rate. To the north, Martin and St. Lucie counties record with their own Clerks in Stuart and Fort Pierce; my Port St. Lucie probate page covers that circuit. The lady bird deed attorney hub lists every county page.
What should I have ready for the call?
The current deed if you have it, the parcel control number, and the latest mortgage statement. With those, most questions are answered on the first call rather than the second.
For a seasonal property, add two things: where you actually reside, and any homestead or residency-based benefit claimed in another state. Those two facts decide which half of this page applies to you, and they are the two a downloaded form never asks about. For a condominium, add the declaration and a recent assessment notice. For a co-op or a manufactured home on a rented lot, the first question is what you actually hold — the share certificate and proprietary lease, or the certificate of title and the lot agreement.
Tell me which kind of property it is — your primary home, a seasonal home, a rental, or a mix — and everyone who holds title. If there is an existing will, trust or power of attorney, or an earlier deed that matters, have it to hand. For the signing, I need to know where you expect to be when you sign, any travel dates that affect scheduling, and whether a family member is helping to coordinate or someone proposes to sign as your agent.
Bring the family facts as well: who would inherit, their ages, where they live, and whether any of them receives needs-based assistance. My preparation checklist lists everything else worth gathering first.
Talk to a Palm Beach County lady bird deed attorney
If you own property in Palm Beach County and want it to reach your family without a court case here — or without a second one, if you live up north — a short call will tell you whether this deed is the right instrument and what it will cost. There is no charge for the call, and I will tell you if the answer is something other than a deed.
Call (305) 224-6811, or send me a message. A standard matter is $675, and it includes speaking directly with me, deed preparation, online notarization, witnesses, county recording fees, and the minimum documentary stamp charge. Any documentary stamp tax above that minimum is separate and explained before you proceed. The fee is confirmed after I read your recorded deed and before any drafting begins.
Last updated: 17 September 2026.
Written and reviewed by Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., attorney, Florida Bar No. 107002.
This page is general information about Florida law and does not constitute legal advice for any particular situation. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.