Pinellas County Lady Bird Deed Attorney — Clearwater and St. Petersburg
A lady bird deed in Pinellas County is the shortest route most homeowners here have to leaving a house to their children without a probate case. If you own a home in Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Largo, Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Pinellas Park, Seminole, Tarpon Springs or one of the beach communities, I prepare and record them for a flat fee of $675 that covers talking it through with me, online notarization, the witnesses and the recording.
You will see the same document called an enhanced life estate deed, and you will see ladybird deed written as one word. Title companies and the recording counters here use all three names for the same instrument, and so does this page.
Most of what I do as a Pinellas County lady bird deed attorney is a single deed for a Clearwater or St. Petersburg homeowner who wants one property to skip probate, rather than a full estate plan. An enhanced life estate deed in Florida still has to account for your mortgage, your homestead exemption and — in this county more than most — your condominium or cooperative association; done carelessly, it creates a problem your children inherit along with the house.
This page is longer than most because Pinellas is not a generic Florida county. It is among the most densely built counties in the state, roughly a quarter of its housing stock is condominium, and the Clerk runs recording counters in two cities rather than one. Those facts change what a deed here has to account for. Everything below is specific to this county, and where a question does not have a settled answer in Florida, I say so instead of guessing.
| Where it gets recorded | Pinellas County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller — 315 Court Street, Room 150, Clearwater, or 545 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg |
|---|---|
| Recording fee | $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each page after it (§ 28.24) |
| Documentary stamp tax | $0.70 per $100 statewide rate. Pinellas charges no discretionary surtax |
| Probate court if the deed fails | Sixth Judicial Circuit, probate division — Pinellas and Pasco share the circuit |
| Homestead filing deadline | March 1, with the Pinellas County Property Appraiser |
| My fee | $675 flat — covers the conversation with me, online notarization, witnesses, recording fees and the minimum documentary stamp |
| Do you have to come to an office? | No. The signing is arranged around you, notarization is handled online, and the deed is electronically recorded |
How a Pinellas County Lady Bird Deed Actually Gets Done
Five steps, and most of the work in them is mine rather than yours.
- You speak with me directly about the property and the family — not an intake form, and not an assistant taking a message.
- I read the deed your property is currently vested under, along with whatever else bears on it: a mortgage, a marriage, a minor child, a condominium or a cooperative.
- I draft the deed, and we go through it together before anything is signed.
- We arrange the signing in the way that suits your situation, including the two witnesses Florida requires and the notarization.
- I record it with the Clerk and send you the recorded copy with its book and page number.
Discuss my Pinellas County property, or call (305) 224-6811. If you would rather know what to gather before that first conversation, it is set out under what to bring to a consultation, further down this page.
What a Lady Bird Deed Is, and Why So Many Pinellas Homes Are Held This Way
What is a lady bird deed?
A lady bird deed is a deed you sign now that keeps everything in your hands for the rest of your life and sends the house to whoever you named the moment you die. You still own it. You can sell it, rent it, mortgage it, remodel it, or tear the whole arrangement up and start over, and you do not need anybody’s permission to do any of that. The general Florida rules are covered on my Florida lady bird deed page; this page is about how they play out in Pinellas. What the deed does is remove the one step that otherwise forces your family into court: it puts the transfer on the public record in advance, so nothing has to be transferred after your death.
What is a ladybird deed, and is it different?
It is the same document. The instrument is written three ways — a lady bird deed, a ladybird deed as one word, and formally an enhanced life estate deed — and all three names describe one thing. Title companies and county recorders tend to say enhanced life estate deed, and a Florida enhanced life estate deed is exactly what they mean by it. Almost everyone else says lady bird deed, or ladybird deed, depending on where they first heard it. If you have been reading about ladybird deeds and wondering whether that is a different animal from what your neighbor in Dunedin signed, it is not.
Why is it called a lady bird deed?
Not for the reason most people assume. The name is widely attributed to a Florida elder law attorney who used President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as the parties in a teaching example decades ago. The example stuck, the nickname outlived it, and the instrument has carried her name ever since. Lady Bird Johnson herself did not sign one, did not invent one, and had nothing to do with Florida property law. It is a memorable label for a dry document, which is probably why it beat “enhanced life estate deed” in ordinary speech.
What is an enhanced life estate deed?
Enhanced life estate deed is the technically accurate name, and the word doing the work is enhanced. An enhanced life estate deed Florida owners sign is the same document your neighbor calls a lady bird deed. In an ordinary life estate deed, the life tenant is stuck: the remainder beneficiaries own a present interest from the day it is signed, and the life tenant cannot sell or mortgage the property without every one of them joining in. The enhanced version keeps that power with the owner. The Fourth District described it that way in Varano v. Varano, 415 So. 3d 1100 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025) — in a footnote quoting Hirschenson, rather than as its own holding, and the Third District had reached the same conclusion about mortgaging in Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of MI, 389 So. 3d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023).
Is a lady bird deed treated as a lifetime transfer or as something in your will?
Generally as a lifetime transfer — Florida law provides that a lifetime transfer of a homestead interest is not a devise, so long as the person making it keeps no power to revoke it or revest title in himself, and that remains true even where he keeps a life estate and the interest becomes possessory only at his death. Read that condition carefully, because a lady bird deed does keep such a power. It is the reason the minor-child section further down is the one real qualification on everything else here.
I have to be careful with that, though, and I would rather tell you than let you assume. No Florida appellate court has squarely decided how an enhanced life estate deed is classified under the homestead provisions of the Constitution, and the retained powers that make this deed useful are also what make the question arguable. Anyone who tells you it is settled is telling you something a court has not said.
Lady bird deed versus a regular life estate deed in Florida
A Florida life estate deed and an enhanced one are not the same instrument, and the difference is the whole point. I have had people walk in with a plain life estate deed a relative prepared years ago, wanting to sell a condo in Seminole, and discover that a son in another state has to sign the closing documents — and can decline. The enhanced version does not create that hostage situation. It also does not create a completed gift while you are alive, which is where its Medicaid and tax treatment come from.
Why this county in particular
Pinellas is unlike the rest of Florida in ways that show up directly in deed work.
| Pinellas County | Florida | |
|---|---|---|
| Residents 65 and older | 28.7% | 21.8% |
| People per square mile | 3,504.2 | 401.4 |
| Owner-occupied housing | 69.5% | 67.6% |
| Median home value | $355,100 | $359,000 |
| Population change, 2020–2025 | −1.1% | rising |
More than one in four residents here is past 65. The county is effectively built out — it is losing population, not gaining it, which almost no Florida county can say. And there are 103,447 condominium units inside its borders. Put those three facts together and you get a county full of older owners holding a single significant asset, often a condo, often with a mortgage or a reverse mortgage on it, and often with children who live somewhere else. That is the exact fact pattern a lady bird deed was designed for, and the exact fact pattern where getting it wrong is expensive.
Where You Record a Lady Bird Deed in Pinellas County
Does a lady bird deed have to be recorded?
Yes, and this is not a formality. Until it is recorded a deed is a piece of paper in a drawer, and the public record still shows you as the sole owner with no plan attached. Recording is what makes the arrangement visible to a title examiner, a lender and, eventually, a probate judge who never has to open a file. An unrecorded deed found in a drawer after a death is the worst of both worlds.
Is the Pinellas County Clerk the recorder of deeds?
Yes. Pinellas has no separate recorder’s office. The Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller holds the recording function, and the official records of the county are maintained there. If you are looking for the Pinellas County recorder of deeds, you are looking for the Clerk.
Where is the Pinellas County recorder of deeds?
There are three places to hand a document in, and only two of them will record it while you wait.
| Location | Address | What happens there |
|---|---|---|
| Clearwater — main | 315 Court Street, Room 150, Clearwater | Full recording services |
| St. Petersburg | 545 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg | Full recording services |
| North County | 3165 McMullen Booth Road, Fessler Center Building B, Clearwater | Drop-off only — documents travel to the main office to be processed |
All three keep the same hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays, and share one phone line at (727) 464-7000. The North County location on McMullen Booth Road is the one people get wrong. It is genuinely convenient if you live in Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Safety Harbor, Oldsmar or East Lake — but it is a drop box, not a counter. Your document goes to Clearwater to be recorded, and you do not walk out with it.
Do I have to appear in person to record a deed?
No, and most of my clients never do. Between electronic recording and mail, the counter is the least-used of the three routes. The reason to go in person is speed and the reassurance of watching it happen, which is a real reason and not a foolish one — but it is not a requirement.
Can I record a deed by mail in Pinellas County?
Yes. The Clerk accepts documents by mail with the correct fees enclosed. The two things that go wrong are the fee calculation and the return address, and both are avoidable. A deed that arrives short by $8.50 comes back unrecorded, and if it comes back to an address you have moved from, you may not learn about it for weeks.
Can I e-record a deed in Pinellas County?
Yes. Pinellas does not accept electronic submissions directly from the public — everything comes through an approved vendor, and the Clerk publishes the list. The volume vendors are Corporation Service Company, eRecording Partners Network, Hopdox and Simplifile. There are also three specialty vendors on the list: E-Recording USA, File and Go, and Record-Nation. Attorneys and title companies use these accounts routinely; an individual homeowner generally cannot open one for a single deed, which is one of the quieter practical reasons people hire out the recording.
How long does Pinellas County take to record a deed?
Electronic submissions are typically back the same business day or the next one. The Clerk’s own published standard is that documents received for recording are processed within two business days, and it does not promise same-day or next-day recording — and neither do I. Volume varies, and a document submitted at 4:15 p.m. is a tomorrow document. Mail runs on the postal service’s schedule plus the Clerk’s queue. Current counter locations, hours and the approved e-recording vendors are published on the Clerk’s recording services page, which is the authority if any of this changes after I write it.
Can I record a deed the same day in Clearwater?
If you walk it into Room 150 during business hours and the document is correct, yes. That is the fastest route available, and it is the reason the counter still exists. What usually ends a same-day recording is a defect in the document — a missing witness, a legal description copied from a tax bill instead of the prior deed, an incomplete notary block. Those get rejected at the counter, and then you are driving back. The Clerk’s own side of it can intervene too — equipment problems, unusual volume, an emergency closure — so if you are building a day around walking a deed in, confirm the counter is open and operating before you drive over.
How do I find my deed in the Pinellas County official records?
The Clerk maintains a searchable index of the Pinellas County official records, and a recorded deed appears there under the names of the parties. This is the free, public way to confirm your deed actually recorded rather than assuming it did. I check it after every recording, and I send my clients the book and page number so they can pull it themselves any time.
How do I get a certified copy of my recorded deed?
The Clerk issues certified copies on request, at either full-service counter or by mail. A plain printout from the online index is fine for your own file. A certified copy is what a bank, a title company or a court will want, and it is worth having one before you need it in a hurry.
What is a Pinellas County deed search, and when do you actually need one?
A deed search means looking at the chain of recorded instruments on a parcel — who conveyed it to whom, and what is still attached to it. That full chain search is title work — what a title company or a title examiner does before a closing. It is not what I do, and it is not part of a deed fee. What I do before drafting is narrower and more specific: I read the deed your property is currently vested under, because the deed I write has to be consistent with it. A surprising number of homes here are still titled in the name of a trust that was never funded properly, or in the names of two people where one of them died in 2011 and nothing was ever recorded about it. Finding that first is cheaper than finding it at a closing. If your situation calls for a full title search, I will say so and tell you who does them.
How to file a lady bird deed in Pinellas County
Stripped of everything else, it is three steps: draft it correctly against the last recorded deed, sign it in front of two witnesses and a notary, and record it with the Clerk. The order matters and the middle step is where most homemade deeds fail. Everything above is detail hanging off those three.
Where does a Pinellas County quit claim deed fit into this?
A quit claim deed transfers whatever interest you have, immediately and with no warranties. People reach for one because the forms are everywhere and the Pinellas County quit claim deed form circulates freely online. Used to give property away during your lifetime, it does something a lady bird deed specifically avoids: it makes the transfer now, permanently, with all the tax and Medicaid and control consequences that follow. There are legitimate uses for a quit claim deed — correcting a name, moving property into a trust you control, resolving a divorce — and I cover those in detail on the Florida quit claim deed page. Giving your house to your children while you are alive is not one of them.
What It Costs
What are the Pinellas County recording fees for a deed?
Recording fees in Florida are set by statute, so they are the same in Pinellas as in Miami-Dade. Section 28.24 sets them out.
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| First page | $10.00 |
| Each additional page | $8.50 |
| Each name indexed beyond the first four | $1.00 |
| Initiating a record search | $7.00 |
| Documentary stamps | $0.70 per $100 — see the section below |
How much does it cost to record a deed in Pinellas County?
A typical two-page lady bird deed costs $18.50 to record — $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for the second — plus documentary stamps. Add $1.00 for each name past the fourth, which matters if you are naming four children and a spouse.
One Pinellas quirk worth knowing, because it cuts in your favor: some Florida counties charge extra per legal description on a multi-parcel instrument. Pinellas does not. And Pinellas has never adopted the discretionary surtax that Miami-Dade imposes, so the doc stamp rate here is the plain statewide rate with nothing added on top.
How much does a lady bird deed cost in Pinellas County?
I charge $675, flat, and that includes the recording. That figure covers the conversation with me, reading the deed your property is currently vested under, drafting the new deed with the retained powers and the homestead language written correctly, online notarization, the two witnesses Florida requires, the county recording fee, the minimum documentary stamp charge, and confirming afterward that it landed in the official records with a book and page number I send you. It does not include a title search. If documentary stamp tax is owed above that minimum — in practice, when the property carries a mortgage — I work the figure out and explain it to you before you decide whether to proceed.
I quote a flat fee here because this is one of the few things in my practice that can honestly be scoped in advance. Most of the work is known before it starts. Where a matter genuinely cannot be scoped that way — a property with a title defect, a contested ownership question, an owner whose capacity is in doubt — I will tell you that on the first call rather than after.
How much does a ladybird deed cost in Clearwater, or in St. Petersburg?
The same. The fee does not change by city, and it does not change because you are in Palm Harbor rather than Gulfport. Pricing that varies by ZIP code within one county is pricing that is guessing.
Is a lady bird deed cheaper than a trust?
For a single Florida homestead and a straightforward family, yes, by a wide margin — a revocable living trust properly drafted and funded is a multiple of this fee, and it has to be maintained. But cheaper is the wrong question if the trust is doing work the deed cannot do. A trust handles minor beneficiaries, staged distributions, out-of-state property, a beneficiary with a disability, a beneficiary with a creditor problem, and incapacity management. A deed handles one house passing outright to competent adults. If your situation is the second one, do not buy the first one. I go through the comparison honestly on the lady bird deed versus living trust page, including the cases where the trust is plainly the better instrument.
What is the cheapest way to avoid probate on a Florida house?
For most Pinellas homeowners with one property, it is this deed. That is not a sales line — it is arithmetic. There is no cheaper mechanism in Florida law for moving a homestead to the next generation, because Florida does not offer a transfer-on-death deed for real estate and the alternatives all cost more or give up more control.
How much would probate cost on the same house if I do nothing?
Enough that the comparison is not close. Under § 733.6171 the Legislature publishes a schedule of attorney’s fees that is presumed reasonable in a formal administration, and anyone describing those figures to you as “the statutory fee” is describing them wrongly — it is a presumption, not a price, and the statute itself requires the attorney to disclose in writing that there is no mandatory statutory fee. Separately, the personal representative is entitled to a commission under § 733.617. On top of both sit filing fees, publication, certified copies and the months of calendar time.
An estate small enough may qualify for summary administration under § 735.201, which is faster and cheaper than a formal administration — the value threshold was raised to $150,000 by chapter 2026-57, effective July 1, 2026. Even summary administration is a court proceeding with a petition, a judge and an order. The deed produces no proceeding at all.
Do I need a lawyer to do a lady bird deed in Florida?
No statute requires one. Whether you should is a different question, and the honest answer is that it depends on how ordinary your situation is. A single owner, one homestead, no mortgage, adult children who get along, no Medicaid on the horizon — that is about as ordinary as it gets, and a competently drafted deed is a short document.
What makes it not ordinary, and where I actually earn the fee: a spouse in the picture, minor children, a mortgage or a reverse mortgage, a condominium, a property that is not your homestead, a beneficiary with creditors, an owner whose memory is slipping, or a prior deed that already did something nobody fully understood.
Can I do a lady bird deed myself in Pinellas County?
You can. People do, and some of them do it correctly. The failures I get called about are almost always one of five things: the legal description was copied off a tax bill or a property appraiser printout instead of the last recorded deed; there were not two witnesses; the retained-powers language was omitted or reversed, which turns it into an ordinary life estate deed and hands control to the children; a married owner signed alone; or the consideration was recited as “$10.00 and other good and valuable consideration,” which I explain below is a genuinely bad idea on this instrument.
The reason these are expensive is timing. Nobody discovers them at signing. They surface at a closing or after a death, when the person who could have fixed the deed by signing a corrected one is unavailable. Blank forms, templates and sample deeds — including what an enhanced life estate deed Florida form actually has to contain — are covered on the Florida lady bird deed form page if you want to see what one looks like before you decide.
One warning about those templates, since this is where people go looking: a Florida life estate deed form and an enhanced life estate deed form are different documents that look nearly identical on the page. Downloading the wrong one is the single easiest way to hand your children a problem.
Can I get a lady bird deed online?
Yes, and for most Pinellas owners that is the practical way to do it. But online describes how a service reaches you, not what you are buying, and three very different things are sold that way. A blank online lady bird deed form is a template you fill in yourself. A document preparation service types your details into that template, and is not permitted to tell you whether it is the right instrument for your situation. An attorney service is one where a lawyer reads the deed your property is vested under, asks about your marriage, your children and your mortgage, and is answerable for the document that results. All three arrive over the internet, so the delivery method tells you nothing on its own. Mine is the third kind: you speak with me directly, and the recorded deed comes back to you with its book and page number. Online notarization suits most Pinellas owners and it is covered by the fee, but it is not automatic. Before anything is scheduled I confirm what your particular signing requires and whether handling it remotely is appropriate for your situation, because it is not the right answer in every case. Whoever you end up comparing, ask what the quoted price actually includes — the review, the signing, the recording, and who picks up the phone afterwards.
Documentary Stamp Tax on a Pinellas County Lady Bird Deed
What is the documentary stamp tax rate in Pinellas County?
Florida’s documentary stamp tax on deeds runs at $0.70 per $100 of consideration under § 201.02. That is the rate everywhere in the state except Miami-Dade, which uses a different structure.
Does Pinellas County charge a discretionary surtax on deeds?
No. Pinellas has not adopted a discretionary surtax on documents. What you owe here is the state rate and nothing more, which quietly makes Pinellas one of the cheaper counties in Florida to record a conveyance.
Do you pay documentary stamp tax on a lady bird deed in Florida?
The Florida Department of Revenue has taken the position, in written advisories, that recording an enhanced life estate deed does not by itself trigger documentary stamp tax, because the deed does not transfer a present interest in the property during your lifetime. The advisory most often quoted is Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004, issued October 16, 2020, which examined a deed on property that was expressly unencumbered.
Can I rely on that advisory?
Not as binding authority, and this is the part almost nobody explains. Section 213.22 of the Florida Statutes says a technical assistance advisement has no precedential value except to the taxpayer who requested it, and then only for the specific transaction described in it. It is not a rule of general application. So an advisory issued to somebody else is useful for understanding how the Department has reasoned, and it is not protection for you.
That is worth pausing on, because you will find pages telling you the Department “has ruled” that these deeds are tax-free. The Department issues advisories to individual taxpayers about individual transactions. Reading one of them as a general ruling that covers your house is reading it for more than it says.
Do you owe doc stamps on a lady bird deed if the house has a mortgage?
A lady bird deed on mortgaged property is the question I get most often, and it is the one where I am not going to give you a clean number on a web page, because Florida does not currently have a clean answer to give.
Two rules point in opposite directions, and both are real.
Florida law separately taxes transfers of mortgaged property, treating the mortgage balance as taxable consideration even if the new owner does not assume the loan. Since 1990 the statute has said so in express terms: § 201.02 defines consideration to include the amount of any mortgage or other encumbrance, whether or not the underlying indebtedness is assumed. The Department’s own rules follow — a gift of mortgaged real estate is taxable on the unpaid balance, and only a gift of unencumbered property escapes. Because the statute is explicit, there is no inquiry into who really bears the debt; the text controls.
Against that sits the Department’s reasoning that an enhanced life estate deed conveys no present beneficial interest at all — and if nothing is presently conveyed, there is nothing for the mortgage balance to be consideration for. The Department has applied that reasoning to reach a no-tax result in at least one advisory involving mortgaged property, though on different facts: a traditional life estate deed on non-homestead property with the remainder returning to the grantor.
The bridge between those two rules — whether a lady bird deed conveys a taxable present interest at all before the owner dies — is the thing that has never been decided. No Florida appellate court, Department rule, or published advisory has squarely decided whether documentary stamp tax applies when an enhanced life estate deed is recorded on property that still carries a mortgage and the remainder beneficiaries are not your spouse.
Because this specific question is unresolved, you should get a transaction-specific opinion — or your own advisory ruling from the Department — before assuming no tax is due. That is what I tell clients whose Pinellas property is mortgaged, and it is why we talk about it before anything is drafted rather than after the deed is on record. What I will not do is publish a rate card for an unsettled question and let you plan around it.
Why the deed should never say “$10.00 and other good and valuable consideration”
That phrase is on nearly every deed form in circulation, and it is the single most common thing I strike out of a draft somebody brings me. It recites consideration. On an instrument whose tax treatment depends on the argument that nothing is presently being conveyed for consideration, volunteering a consideration recital works directly against you. There is no benefit to it on this deed and there is potential harm, so it comes out.
Your Homestead Exemption and Save Our Homes
This is where I see the most anxiety and the most bad information, usually in the same conversation. People have heard that signing a deed costs them their exemption, and they have heard it from someone confident.
Does a lady bird deed affect my Pinellas County homestead exemption?
Drafted correctly, no. You remain the owner for property tax purposes because you have not given away a present interest — the same feature that drives its documentary stamp treatment drives its homestead treatment. Your exemption continues, your assessment continues, and nothing about your November tax bill changes.
The qualifier “drafted correctly” is doing real work in that sentence. A deed that fails to retain the powers properly is not a lady bird deed; it is an ordinary life estate deed or an outright transfer, and those can have very different consequences.
Does a lady bird deed reset Save Our Homes?
No, for the same reason. Save Our Homes caps the annual increase in assessed value on homestead property, and after enough years the gap between assessed and market value on a Pinellas home can be enormous — particularly in the older neighborhoods of St. Petersburg and Clearwater where owners have held property for decades. A change of ownership resets that cap to just value. A properly drafted enhanced life estate deed, one that lists you as both grantor and grantee, is designed to avoid a change of ownership while you are alive, so the cap should not reset. A deed in which the owner appears only as grantor and reserves a life estate does not fit the section 193.155(3)(a)1.c exception on its text, and no Florida appellate court has yet applied that exception to a lady bird deed.
Will my property taxes go up if I sign a lady bird deed?
Not as a result of signing it. Your taxes will do whatever the millage and the market do. What the deed is designed to avoid is the specific event — a reassessment at just value — that would follow from giving the property away outright during your lifetime.
Do my children keep my Save Our Homes cap after I die?
Generally not, and this is the part people find unwelcome. Your death is a change of ownership, and the property is reassessed at just value on the following January 1 unless the person taking it fits one of the statutory exceptions. An adult child ordinarily fits none of them, whether or not they live there. Where no exception applies, a child who does move in can apply for homestead in their own right and start a new cap, but they start it at the new number, not yours.
This matters more in Pinellas than in almost any other county, because the accumulated gap is larger here. It is worth knowing before the deed is signed, because for some families it changes the plan — if the intention was always to sell the house anyway, the reset is irrelevant.
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.
How do I file for homestead exemption with the Pinellas County Property Appraiser?
Applications go to the Pinellas County Property Appraiser, and the office keeps a main location plus satellites around the county so you are not driving to Clearwater from Tarpon Springs to file a form. Filing is free. Anyone charging you a fee to file a Florida homestead exemption application is selling you something you can do yourself.
What is the March 1 homestead deadline?
March 1 is the annual filing deadline. Miss it and you are waiting for the following tax year, which on a Pinellas home is a meaningful amount of money to leave on the table for twelve months. If a lady bird deed is recorded and a beneficiary later takes the property as their residence, that March 1 date becomes the one to calendar.
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 Pinellas 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.
What happens if I had an exemption in another state?
The Property Appraiser will want proof that you gave it up, and there is a timing rule that catches people: the out-of-state exemption generally has to have been removed within 30 days. Snowbirds who bought in Palm Harbor or Dunedin and kept a homestead in Michigan or New York run into this constantly. Handle it before you apply, not after the denial letter.
Can I port my Save Our Homes benefit in Pinellas County?
Florida allows portability — moving accumulated Save Our Homes savings from a prior Florida homestead to a new one — and it applies to a move within Pinellas or into Pinellas from another Florida county. It has its own application and its own timing, and it is separate from the exemption itself. If you sold in Largo and bought in Seminole, ask about it, because nobody will volunteer it.
Medicaid, Nursing Homes and Estate Recovery
In a county where more than one in four residents is past 65 this is not a side topic, and it is the single most common real reason people sign these deeds. It is also where the internet is least reliable, so I want to be careful about what is established and what is not.
Is a lady bird trust a real thing?
No. There is no such instrument in Florida. People searching that term usually want either this deed or a revocable living trust, which are different tools. There is also no lady bird will and no “lady bird law” — Florida has no statute governing these deeds at all.
Does a lady bird deed protect my house from Medicaid?
It addresses one specific risk well and leaves others untouched. The risk it addresses is what happens to the house after you die when Florida’s Medicaid agency looks for assets to recover against. It does not make you eligible for Medicaid, it does not shelter your other assets, and it does not pay for care.
Does a lady bird deed trigger the Medicaid five-year look-back?
The reason this instrument exists in elder law practice is that it is not treated as a completed gift while you are alive. You kept the power to sell, to mortgage, to revoke — you did not give anything away. On that reasoning there is nothing to start a look-back clock. No Florida rule reaches this kind of deed either way, though, and no Florida court has decided it. Your home is not a countable resource for Medicaid purposes as long as it is your principal residence — or, if you have moved to a nursing facility, as long as you intend to return or your spouse or a dependent relative is still living there. Separately, if your equity in the home exceeds the annual federal limit, you will not be eligible for nursing facility, institutional hospice, or home-and-community-based waiver services until that equity is reduced below the cap, unless your spouse, a child under 21, or a blind or disabled child of any age is lawfully living in the home. Both rules come from regulations formally adopted under Florida and federal law rather than from any Florida court decision, and buying a life estate in someone else’s property is a different transaction that is not protected this way.
Contrast that with adding a child to the deed, or deeding the house to a child outright. Those are gifts, they are look-back events, and they can produce a period of ineligibility at precisely the moment a family needs coverage. I have watched that happen because someone was told at a dinner party that putting the house in the kids’ names was the smart move.
Does a lady bird deed count as a gift for Medicaid?
Under current Florida practice, no, for the reason just given. I flag one caution: eligibility rules are administered under program policy that changes, and they are applied by caseworkers to specific facts. If Medicaid planning is the actual reason you are here — as opposed to a benefit you are happy to have — the deed should be part of a plan built by someone doing the eligibility work, not a standalone document.
What is Medicaid estate recovery in Florida?
Federal law requires states to seek recovery from the estates of certain deceased Medicaid recipients, and Florida runs its program under §§ 409.910 and 409.9101. The Agency for Health Care Administration presents a claim against the probate estate. That last phrase is the whole point: the claim runs against the probate estate.
Can Florida Medicaid take my house after I die?
If the house has to pass through probate, it is exposed to that process. If the house passed automatically at your death by operation of a recorded deed, it did not become part of a probate estate for a claim to reach. That is the mechanism — not a magic shield, just the absence of the thing the claim attaches to.
Florida homestead also carries constitutional creditor protection under Article X, section 4, which continues for heirs in defined circumstances. Those protections and the recovery program interact in ways that depend on who inherits and what they do with the property, and I would rather walk you through your own facts than publish a generalization here that turns out not to fit them.
Will a lady bird deed keep my home out of a nursing home claim?
It is the most effective simple step available for that purpose, and it is why so many Pinellas families sign one. What it does not do is protect the house from a claim while you are alive, protect anything other than the house, or substitute for long-term care planning. Anyone telling you a single deed solves long-term care is overselling a good instrument.
What a lady bird deed does not do
Worth stating in one place, because pages like this one tend to accumulate benefits and go quiet about limits. It does not avoid probate on anything except the property described in it. It does not manage your affairs if you lose capacity — that is a durable power of attorney and a health care surrogate. It does not override a mortgage. It does not create asset protection for your beneficiaries. And it does not help at all with a property you do not own outright the way you think you do, which is why I read your recorded deed first.
Lady Bird Deeds on a Pinellas County Condominium
With 103,447 condominium units, Pinellas is a condo county, and a condo raises questions a single-family home does not.
Can you do a lady bird deed on a Florida condo?
Yes. A condominium unit is real property and can be conveyed by an enhanced life estate deed like any other parcel. The mechanics are the same. The consequences are more complicated because a unit comes attached to an association, a budget and a building.
Do I need the association’s approval to sign one?
Usually not to sign it, because you are not transferring a present interest — but many Pinellas declarations contain transfer, approval or right-of-first-refusal provisions, and some are drafted broadly enough to sweep in more than an outright sale. The declaration governs, and declarations here are not uniform. I read yours rather than assuming.
Read the declaration. That is the answer, and there is no reliable general one — approval clauses and rights of first refusal are creatures of the recorded documents and they vary. What does not vary is the money. Under section 718.116(1)(a) for a condominium and section 720.3085(2) for a homeowners’ association, whoever takes title is liable for assessments coming due while they own it and jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for what went unpaid before. Ask the association for an estoppel certificate before anything else.
Who pays the condo assessments after the owner dies?
The unit does not stop owing money because the owner died. Assessments keep accruing, and somebody has to keep paying them from the date of death forward. When a lady bird deed is in place, the beneficiary owns the unit immediately and is the one the association looks to — which is cleaner than the alternative, where nobody has authority to pay anything until a court appoints someone.
Is the new owner liable for the previous owner’s unpaid assessments?
This is the question that costs people money, and § 718.116 is the section to know. Florida condominium law makes a unit owner jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for unpaid assessments that came due up to the time of transfer. A beneficiary who inherits a unit with an arrearage inherits the arrearage attached to the unit. It is not a debt they can decline.
So if a unit in Clearwater or St. Pete Beach is behind on assessments, that is a fact the family needs before the deed is signed, not after. Sometimes it changes what the plan should be.
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 is the milestone inspection requirement?
Florida requires a structural milestone inspection of certain older condominium and cooperative buildings under § 553.899. The trigger is 30 years: the owner of a covered building must have the inspection performed by December 31 of the year the building reaches 30 years of age, measured from its certificate of occupancy, and then every 10 years after that.
Which buildings does it apply to?
Buildings three habitable stories or more that are subject, in whole or in part, to the condominium or cooperative form of ownership. The statute expressly does not apply to a single-family, two-family, three-family or four-family dwelling with three or fewer habitable stories. So a house in Largo is outside this entirely; a mid-rise on Clearwater Beach is not.
Is there a 25-year rule for buildings near the coast?
Not as a statewide mandate, and this is where most of what you will read online is out of date. The 2022 version of the law did impose an automatic 25-year trigger on buildings within three miles of a coastline. That automatic distinction was removed in 2023. Under the current statute a shorter 25-year trigger is a local option: a local enforcement agency may determine that local circumstances — including environmental conditions such as proximity to salt water — warrant inspection at 25 years, and every 10 years after.
For a Pinellas audience that distinction matters, because much of this county sits near salt water and the old rule is still repeated on law firm pages and in association newsletters. The accurate statement today is that 25 years is something a local enforcement agency can require, not something the state imposes automatically. Whether it applies to a particular building here is a question for the local agency, not something you can read off a map.
What is a structural integrity reserve study?
Separately from the inspection, a residential condominium association must have a structural integrity reserve study completed at least every 10 years for each building three habitable stories or higher. The study covers the roof, load-bearing and structural components, fireproofing and fire protection, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and exterior painting, windows and exterior doors, and any other item whose deferred maintenance or replacement cost exceeds $25,000. The practical effect across Florida has been sharp increases in monthly assessments and, in some buildings, large special assessments. Pinellas has seen this acutely.
One thing to keep straight: milestone inspections and reserve studies are building-safety and association-governance obligations. They are not affected by, and do not affect, whether an individual unit is transferred by a lady bird deed. They matter here because they change what your beneficiary inherits — not because they change how the deed works.
Does a lady bird deed help with a special assessment?
No, and I want to be direct about that because it is the least pleasant paragraph on this page. The deed decides who owns the unit. It does not decide what the unit owes. If a beach condominium is heading toward a six-figure special assessment, your beneficiary inherits a unit with that obligation attached, and they may not want it.
That is worth a conversation before the deed is signed. For some Pinellas families the honest answer is that the unit should be sold during the owner’s lifetime rather than passed down, and I would rather say that to you than draft a deed that hands your children a problem with your name on it.
Mobile Homes, Manufactured Homes and Co-ops: When This Deed Does Not Work
Pinellas has one of the largest concentrations of manufactured-home communities and residential cooperatives in Florida, much of it age-restricted, much of it owned by exactly the people this page is written for. For a good share of those owners a lady bird deed is the wrong instrument — not a worse option, the wrong one. It is better to hear that here than to pay for a document that conveys nothing.
Can you do a lady bird deed on a mobile home in Florida?
It depends entirely on whether the home is real property or personal property, and in Florida that turns on the land.
A manufactured home is treated as real property only when the person who owns the home also owns the land it sits on and the home is permanently affixed to it. When those things are true and the property appraiser assesses the home along with the land, it is taxed as real property. When they are not, the home stays a titled vehicle in the records of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, and it is presumed to be tangible personal property.
What is an RP decal, and do I have one?
The “RP” sticker is the visible sign that a home has been classified as real property, but it is a consequence of that classification rather than the thing that creates it. The tax collector issues an RP sticker only on production of a certificate from the property appraiser showing the home is included in an ad valorem assessment. So there are three prerequisites, in order: you own the land, the home is permanently affixed to it, and the property appraiser has assessed it as real property.
Worth knowing: even a home that is permanently affixed and taxed as real property still carries an RP plate issued by the state. The plate is not the problem. What matters is what stands behind it.
Do I need to retire the title before a deed will work?
This is the step most people have never heard of. Florida lets the owner permanently retire the home’s certificate of title where the home is permanently affixed to real property owned by the same person — and for this purpose, a recorded lease of 30 years or more counts as real property owned by that person. Once the title is retired, the home is conveyed by deed or real estate contract, and only together with the land it is affixed to.
Until the title is retired, ownership moves through the motor vehicle department, not through the land records. Florida law is blunt about it: a person does not acquire marketable title to a mobile home until a certificate of title is issued, and no court will recognize an interest in one unless it is evidenced by a certificate of title.
What if I own my home but rent the lot?
Then a lady bird deed conveys nothing, and I would rather say so plainly than take a fee for drafting one. In a typical land-lease or co-op park — a monthly or annual lot rental, not a recorded lease of 30 years or more — the home remains personal property titled through the state, there is no real property interest for a deed to reach, and title retirement is not available to you.
The right instrument is a certificate-of-title transfer. And there is a survivorship option most park residents are never told about: the home can be titled to co-owners in the alternative, using “or” between the names, which creates a joint tenancy so that on the death of one co-owner the interest passes to the survivor. That is the practical equivalent of what you were hoping the deed would do, and it is handled at the tax collector’s office rather than the Clerk’s.
One caution I will give you honestly: no Florida appellate court has squarely decided whether an enhanced life estate deed can convey a manufactured home. What is written above follows from the titling and classification statutes and from the cases on when these homes are real versus personal property. It is a straightforward application of those rules, not a decided question.
Can you do a lady bird deed on a co-op?
No, and the reason is structural rather than technical. In a Florida cooperative, legal title to the land and the building is held by the association. What you own is an ownership interest in that association — shares or a membership — together with a lease or other document giving you the right to occupy your unit. Florida’s cooperative statute calls an interest in a unit an interest in real property, but the interest is held through those two components, not through fee title, and the owner receives shares and a long-term lease as evidence of title rather than a deed of conveyance.
Because there is no deed in the chain to begin with, there is nothing for a lady bird deed to operate on.
So how do I pass down a Pinellas co-op unit?
Through the shares and the lease. The transfer is an assignment of the membership interest and the proprietary lease, and it is subject to whatever approval and transfer provisions the cooperative documents impose — which in a 55-plus building can include occupancy restrictions your beneficiary may not satisfy. Read the documents before you plan around them.
Here too I will be straight with you: no Florida statute, rule or appellate decision addresses whether an enhanced life estate deed can be used for a cooperative unit, and chapter 719 provides no deed-based or transfer-on-death mechanism for the interest. Every Florida case recognizing these deeds involves real property conveyed by deed, not a co-op. If someone offers to sell you a lady bird deed for a co-op unit, ask them what it is supposed to convey.
The short version for Largo, Seminole, Pinellas Park and the parks
| What you own | Does a lady bird deed work? | What to use instead |
|---|---|---|
| Manufactured home with an RP decal, on land you own | Yes — the home is real property and passes with the land | — |
| Manufactured home on a rented lot | No — it conveys nothing | Certificate-of-title transfer; consider titling with “or” for survivorship |
| Cooperative apartment unit | No — you hold shares and a lease, not a deed | Assignment of the shares and the proprietary lease, subject to association approval |
| Condominium unit | Yes — a condominium unit is real property | — |
| Single-family home or villa on land you own | Yes | — |
Reverse Mortgages and Pinellas County Homes
Reverse mortgages are common in a county this old, and they interact with these deeds in a way that surprises families at the worst possible moment.
Can I still take a reverse mortgage after signing?
Yes — the power to mortgage is one of the powers the deed retains for you, and the Third District said as much in Hirschenson, where the entire purpose of the deed at issue was to facilitate a reverse mortgage. You have not given away the ability to borrow against your own home.
Does a lady bird deed stop a reverse mortgage from becoming due?
No. The deed removes the probate case. It does not remove the loan, and it does not remove the deadline the loan carries. A reverse mortgage becomes due and payable when the last borrower dies or permanently leaves the home, and the recorded deed does not change that term.
This is the most important sentence on this section of the page: your family avoids probate and still faces a clock.
What happens to a reverse mortgage when the owner dies?
The lien survives. Death does not forgive a mortgage. What changes is who the servicer is dealing with, and with a lady bird deed in place that is your beneficiary, immediately, rather than a personal representative who does not exist yet.
How long do heirs have to pay off a reverse mortgage?
It depends on the holder of the mortgage and the loan program, and anyone who gives you a single number without reading your loan documents is guessing. Deadlines and options vary. What is consistent is that the clock starts at the death, not at the moment your family gets organized — and nobody is opening the mail at an empty house.
What I tell families is to move early, because being early is what buys options. Get the mail. Find the loan documents and identify the servicer. Do not ignore or throw away lender correspondence. Keep the taxes and the insurance current, because a lapse in either is itself a default under most reverse mortgages regardless of the balance. If a reverse mortgage is in the picture, contact a lawyer immediately rather than waiting to see what arrives — foreclosure after a death is very often avoidable, by acting early.
Can heirs keep the house instead of selling it?
Often, yes, if they can refinance or pay the balance. Pinellas homes frequently carry real equity above the loan balance, and that equity is only recoverable through a sale the family controls rather than one a lender controls. Being early is what keeps that choice open.
What if the loan balance exceeds the home’s value?
Federally insured reverse mortgages are non-recourse, which means the family is not personally liable for a shortfall beyond the property. That is genuinely reassuring and it is frequently not understood. It does not mean there is nothing to do — it means the decision is about the house, not about the family’s other money.
The non-borrowing spouse problem
If one spouse signed the loan and the other did not, there are specific rules about whether the non-borrowing spouse can remain in the home, and they turn on certifications and paperwork done at the time the loan was made and kept current afterward. This is the reverse-mortgage scenario I most want to hear about early. Do not assume it is fine, and do not assume it is hopeless.
Signing Requirements, and What Makes a Lady Bird Deed Fail
How many witnesses does a Florida lady bird deed require?
Two. Florida requires two subscribing witnesses for a deed conveying an interest in real property under § 689.01, and a deed short a witness is defective in a way that is difficult to cure once the person who signed it is gone. This is the most common defect I see on do-it-yourself deeds and it is entirely preventable.
Does a lady bird deed have to be notarized?
To be recorded, yes — § 695.03 requires an acknowledgment before a notary or other authorized officer. Notarization and witnessing are separate requirements and a notary is not a substitute for the two witnesses.
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.
Does my spouse have to sign?
If the property is your Florida homestead and you are married, your spouse’s involvement is not optional — because Florida’s Constitution requires a spouse to join in transferring homestead property, and a spouse’s separate written waiver of devise rights does not by itself waive that joinder requirement.
That sentence is doing more work than it looks. Article X, section 4 of the Florida Constitution contains two separate restrictions on homestead, and they are not the same rule. One limits how homestead may be devised when a spouse or minor child survives. The other limits alienation — the owner, joined by the spouse if married, may transfer homestead by mortgage, sale or gift. Florida courts have consistently read that second restriction to mean a married owner cannot effectively convey homestead to a third party without the spouse joining, and a deed of homestead signed by one spouse alone is not effectual to convey the property, even where that spouse owns it outright.
The waiver in § 732.7025 does not close that gap. By its own terms it waives the devise restriction only, and expressly may not be treated as a waiver of the restrictions against alienation without the joinder of the owner’s spouse. So a signed waiver is not a substitute for a signature on the deed.
Can I do a lady bird deed if I have minor children?
This is the hard one, and the answer is usually no. The Florida Constitution says homestead shall not be subject to devise if the owner is survived by a minor child, and there is no exception that lets you route it around the child. The escape route people reach for does not work either. Fla. Stat. § 732.4017 treats a lifetime transfer as something other than a devise — but only where the transferor keeps no power to revoke or revest title, and the enhanced power is exactly such a power, since selling without your remainderman’s joinder revests the whole fee in you. Section 732.4017(3)(a) expressly protects a retained life estate, a possibility of reverter, or a fractional fee interest. It does not protect a retained power to unilaterally extinguish the remainder, which is the defining feature of this instrument.
The practical consequence is what matters to you. If a minor child survives, the homestead does not pass to the person you named on the deed. It descends by operation of law under § 732.401 instead — a surviving spouse takes a life estate with a vested remainder to the descendants in being, per stirpes. Florida courts have not settled the precise mechanics for an enhanced life estate deed in that situation, and I am not going to guess at a label for you. The outcome is the point: the deed does not get you where you were trying to go. If you have minor children, tell me before anything is drafted, because the answer for your family is a different instrument.
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. Grandchildren matter on the other side of the question: if the restriction does apply, because you are survived by a spouse or by a minor child of your own, section 732.401 sends the homestead to your descendants, and there a grandchild takes the share their parent would have taken. No Florida court has squarely addressed the point, but the text runs one way.
Can a power of attorney sign a lady bird deed?
Only if the power of attorney expressly grants that authority. Florida’s power of attorney statute requires certain significant powers — including those affecting property rights in this way — to be specifically enumerated and separately initialed. A general durable power of attorney that does not say so does not carry it. This comes up constantly when an adult child in another state is trying to help a parent whose health is declining, and it is very often the moment we discover the power of attorney is not adequate.
Can I name more than one beneficiary?
Yes, and most people do. The thing to decide deliberately is what happens between them afterward. Florida presumes a tenancy in common rather than survivorship — § 689.15 says survivorship “shall not prevail in this state” outside estates by the entirety unless the instrument expressly provides for it. If you name three children and want the survivors to take a deceased child’s share, the deed has to say so.
Worth thinking about separately: three adults who jointly own one house must agree in order to sell it. If they cannot agree, the remedy is a partition action, which is a lawsuit between siblings over their parent’s home. I litigate those. Nobody enjoys them, and they are frequently the direct consequence of a deed that named everyone equally without anyone discussing it first.
What if a beneficiary dies before I do?
It depends on how the deed is drafted, which is exactly why this should be drafted rather than downloaded. A deed naming beneficiaries with no provision for one predeceasing you can send that share somewhere you did not intend — potentially into that person’s own estate, and into their probate. Anti-lapse concepts that apply to wills do not automatically map onto deeds.
Can I change or revoke it later?
Yes. That is the defining feature. You can record a new deed, name different people, or convey the property away entirely, and you do not need the consent of anyone you named. Your beneficiaries have no vote while you are alive. Some clients find it useful not to tell anyone at all.
What exactly a named beneficiary holds in the meantime is a question Florida has not pinned down. Practitioners describe the interest in different ways, and no Florida court has fixed the label. That is the honest state of it, and it is one more reason the drafting matters: the less clearly the deed reserves your powers, the more room there is to argue about what you gave away.
Can I sell my house with a lady bird deed?
Yes, without the beneficiaries joining. That is what Varano confirms. If you sell, the deed simply becomes irrelevant — there is no property left for it to convey, and no beneficiary is entitled to any part of the proceeds.
Does a lady bird deed override my will?
In practical effect, yes, as to that property. The house passes by operation of the recorded deed at the moment of death; it never becomes part of the estate the will governs. So a will leaving “my home to my daughter” does nothing if a recorded deed already sends the home to your son. This is a real source of family conflict and it is worth making sure the two documents agree with each other. Reviewing them together is part of what I do.
Will a title company insure it?
In Florida, generally yes — these have been used here for decades and underwriters are familiar with them. Familiar is not the same as indifferent, though. Underwriters look at the retained-powers language closely, and a deed with sloppy or ambiguous retained powers is exactly the deed that generates a title objection years later, when the beneficiary is trying to sell and the person who could have fixed it has died. A clean deed today is cheaper than a curative action later.
How It Compares to the Alternatives
Every instrument below does something. The question is which one matches your situation, and the honest answer for a lot of Pinellas homeowners is the cheapest one on the list.
| Instrument | Keeps control while you are alive? | Avoids probate on the house? | Relative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lady bird deed | Yes — fully | Yes | Lowest |
| Revocable living trust | Yes | Yes, if funded | Highest |
| Ordinary life estate deed | No — beneficiaries must join to sell | Yes | Low |
| Quit claim deed to a child now | No — you no longer own it | Yes, but at a cost | Low, with expensive consequences |
| Will alone | Yes | No — probate is the point | Moderate, plus probate later |
| Doing nothing | Yes | No | Paid by your family |
Lady Bird Deed vs. Living Trust in Florida
A trust is a broader tool and it costs more because it does more. It handles multiple properties, out-of-state real estate, staged distributions, minor beneficiaries, a beneficiary who cannot manage money, and management of your affairs if you lose capacity. A deed does none of that; it moves one parcel. If a trust is the right answer, I will tell you, even though it is a larger engagement. The full comparison is on the lady bird deed versus living trust page.
Lady Bird Deed vs. Quit Claim Deed
A quit claim deed transfers now. A lady bird deed transfers at death. That single difference is where the gift tax exposure, the Medicaid look-back, the loss of Save Our Homes, the loss of control and the loss of the stepped-up basis all come from. When someone tells you they “just quit claimed the house to the kids,” they usually did four expensive things without meaning to.
Lady bird deed versus a transfer on death deed — does Florida have one?
Florida has no transfer-on-death deed for real property. It has not adopted the uniform act, and there is no statute authorizing a TOD deed for real estate here. Florida’s transfer-on-death framework covers securities registered in beneficiary form and pay-on-death accounts at financial institutions — not land and not houses.
The lady bird deed fills that gap in practice, but it does so as a common-law instrument, not a statutory one. Florida has no statute specifically authorizing or governing it. That is worth understanding rather than glossing over, and it is another reason the drafting matters: there is no statutory form to fall back on.
Should I just add my child to the deed instead?
Please talk to someone before you do. Adding a child as a joint owner is the single most common well-intentioned mistake in Florida estate planning. It is a present gift, so it can trigger a Medicaid look-back. It exposes your home to that child’s creditors, that child’s divorce and that child’s judgment holders. It can reset your assessment. It gives away part of the stepped-up basis your family would otherwise get. And it means you cannot sell your own house without your child’s signature.
Every one of those problems is solved by an instrument that costs about the same to prepare.
Lady Bird Trust, Lady Bird Will, Lady Bird Law: What People Usually Mean
A large share of the people who find this page searched for something that does not exist. That is not a criticism — the name is memorable and the category is not, so it gets attached to whichever legal document the searcher half-remembers. Here is what each of those searches is usually reaching for.
Is there such a thing as a lady bird trust?
No. There is no instrument in Florida law called a lady bird trust, and anyone offering to sell you one is using a name they made up or repeating one they heard. Someone searching for a ladybird trust is almost always after one of two things: the deed described on this page, or a revocable living trust, which is a genuinely different tool that does genuinely different work. The two get conflated because both are marketed as ways to avoid probate, so a search for a ladybird trust in Florida is really a question about which of them you need.
Occasionally the phrase means something more specific and more sensible — a lady bird deed that names a trust as the remainder beneficiary rather than naming people. That combination is real, it is sometimes the right answer, and it is worth asking about if a trust is already part of your plan. But it is a deed and a trust working together, not a single hybrid document.
Is a lady bird deed a trust?
It is not. A trust is a separate arrangement with a trustee, a trust agreement and property retitled into it; it can hold many assets, it can operate for years after your death, and it can impose conditions. A deed is one page describing one parcel. Nothing is transferred into anything, there is no trustee, and there is no document governing what happens next — the property simply changes hands the moment you die.
That difference is the whole reason to pick one over the other, and I have set it out honestly in the comparison above rather than steering you toward the cheaper document because it is the one I am writing about.
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.
Is there a lady bird will in Florida?
No, and the two ideas pull in opposite directions. A will is the document that sends property through probate; it has no effect until a court admits it and someone is appointed. This deed exists to keep the property out of that process entirely. So a lady bird will would be a document that avoids probate by going through probate, which is a contradiction rather than a product.
You should still have a will. It handles everything the deed does not touch, and the two need to agree with each other — which is one of the things I check.
Is there a “lady bird law” in Florida?
There is not, and this is the most useful fact on the page for anyone trying to research this themselves. No Florida statute authorizes, defines or supplies a form for these deeds, though Florida’s general statutes on deed execution, recording, documentary stamp tax and homestead apply to them exactly as they apply to any other deed. They are a common law instrument, built on ordinary Florida property principles and confirmed in appellate decisions rather than created by the Legislature. If you have been searching for the lady bird law in Florida and finding nothing, that is because there is nothing to find.
It matters practically. There is no statutory form to fall back on and no safe-harbor language written by the Legislature, so everything depends on how the document is drafted. It is also why a handful of questions in this area — including the mortgage question above — still do not have clean answers.
What is the lady bird clause?
The lady bird clause is the retained-powers language: the paragraph reserving your right to sell, convey, mortgage, lease or otherwise dispose of the property during your lifetime without the joinder of anyone you named. It is the enhancement in “enhanced life estate deed.” A lady bird clause in a Florida deed is the difference between the instrument on this page and an ordinary life estate deed that hands control to your children the day you sign.
It is also the clause title examiners read hardest and the clause homemade deeds get wrong most often. Vague wording that merely says you keep a life estate is not enough.
What Happens After You Die
What do my beneficiaries actually do?
Far less than they would otherwise. In the ordinary case: obtain certified death certificates, record what the title company or the Clerk needs to establish that the life estate has ended, apply for their own homestead exemption by March 1 if one of them will live there, and deal with the mortgage, the insurance and, in a condominium, the association. There is no petition, no personal representative, no notice to creditors and no judge.
The detailed walkthrough is on the lady bird deed after death page, which covers the post-death steps in full.
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.
Do beneficiaries get a stepped-up basis?
Because the property is included in your estate for federal tax purposes — you retained the powers, so it never left — the beneficiaries generally take it with a basis stepped up to its value at your death. On a Pinellas home bought in 1994 and worth several times that today, this is frequently worth more than everything else on this page combined — the lady bird deed tax consequences page goes through it in detail — and it is the reason a quit claim deed to a child during life is such an expensive mistake. I am not a tax attorney and this is not tax advice; the practical instruction is to get a date-of-death value documented early, by appraisal rather than guess, because the basis rests on it and it is far harder to establish two years later.
What if the deed fails — what is summary administration?
If something goes wrong and the house has to be probated, the shorter route is summary administration under § 735.201, available where the qualifying value does not exceed $150,000 as raised by chapter 2026-57 effective July 1, 2026, or where the decedent has been dead more than two years — the second ground carries no value limit at all. Protected homestead is excluded from that calculation, which means a Pinellas house can be worth well above the threshold and the estate can still qualify.
Which court hears the probate if the deed fails?
The circuit court, probate division. Florida has no separate probate court — the 1972 revision of Article V put probate in the circuit courts.
Is the Sixth Judicial Circuit the probate court for Pinellas County?
Yes. Pinellas sits in the Sixth Judicial Circuit under § 26.021, and it shares that circuit with Pasco County. How the division works is set out on my Pinellas County probate court page. Practically, that means a Pinellas probate matter can involve judges and administrative practices shaped by a two-county circuit, and local procedure is set by the circuit rather than by statute. If you end up in a contested matter, that is covered on my Pinellas County probate litigation page, and general Pinellas probate questions are addressed on the St. Petersburg probate lawyer page.
Pinellas County Cities and Communities
The recording rules are the same everywhere in the county. What changes from city to city is which counter is convenient, what the housing stock looks like, and therefore which of the questions above is likely to be the one that matters to you.
Clearwater
The county seat, and the location of both the courthouse at 315 Court Street and the main recording counter in Room 150. If you have been searching for a Clearwater lady bird deed attorney — or typed it as a Clearwater ladybird deed, which is how about half the people who call me spell it — the practical advantage of the city is proximity to the counter — a document can be walked in and recorded the same day. Clearwater’s housing mix runs from mid-century single-family neighborhoods to beachfront condominium towers, so both the Save Our Homes discussion and the condominium discussion above come up here.
St. Petersburg
The county’s largest city, and the second full-service recording counter at 545 First Avenue North. St. Petersburg has the deepest stock of long-held homes in the county, which makes the Save Our Homes point especially sharp — owners in the older neighborhoods are frequently sitting on an assessment gap that took thirty years to build and would vanish in a single reassessment. A St. Petersburg lady bird deed, or a saint Petersburg ladybird deed if that is the spelling you searched, is very often really a conversation about that gap and about which child, if any, will live in the house.
Largo
Central, dense, and heavy on the villa, patio-home and manufactured-housing communities that raise a question single-family homes do not: what exactly do you own? Some of these communities involve land you own, some involve a share in a cooperative, and the answer changes what instrument is appropriate. So a Largo ladybird deed is worth ten minutes of checking before anyone drafts anything, and I do that checking rather than assume. If you are in a manufactured-home community or a cooperative, read the section on those below first — for a good number of these homes a deed is not the right instrument at all.
Palm Harbor, Dunedin and the north county
North county residents are closest to the McMullen Booth Road location, which as noted above is drop-off only. Palm Harbor and Dunedin ladybird deeds are drafted and recorded exactly as they are anywhere else in Pinellas. Palm Harbor and Dunedin also have a high proportion of owners who arrived from another state and kept a home there, which puts the out-of-state exemption question and its 30-day rule squarely in play.
Pinellas Park, Seminole and Kenneth City
Mid-county, and home to a large share of the county’s retirement and 55-plus communities. A Pinellas Park, Seminole or Kenneth City ladybird deed raises one extra question the coastal cities do not. One clarification before it does, because this one causes real confusion: the Seminole here is the city of Seminole, which sits inside Pinellas County. Seminole County is a different place altogether, up near Orlando, and if your property is there you want the Altamonte Springs and Seminole County page instead. Your tax bill or your recorded deed will name the county. Deed-restricted and age-restricted communities have their own transfer and occupancy provisions, and those provisions do not all treat a beneficiary the same way they treat a purchaser. That is a document I want to read before your deed is drafted. The manufactured-home parks and cooperatives concentrated in this part of the county raise a different question again, covered above: whether there is any real property for a deed to convey.
Tarpon Springs, Safety Harbor and Oldsmar
The northern edge of the county. Everything on this page applies identically — a Tarpon Springs ladybird deed is drafted, signed and recorded exactly as one in St. Petersburg is — and the only practical difference is drive time to a counter, which electronic recording makes irrelevant.
The beach communities
Clearwater Beach, St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach, Indian Rocks Beach, Belleair and Belleair Bluffs, Redington and North Redington Beach, Gulfport, South Pasadena, Tierra Verde and Bay Pines. These are the addresses where the condominium section above matters most — older coastal buildings, structural inspection obligations and reserve funding are concentrated here, and a special assessment can change what your family wants to do with a unit. If your property is on the water, read that section twice.
Everywhere else in the county
Feather Sound, East Lake, Ozona, Crystal Beach and the unincorporated areas are all handled the same way. I take Pinellas matters countywide, and I take matters throughout Florida — the other counties are listed on the lady bird deed attorney hub. If your property is across the bay rather than in Pinellas, the Tampa page covers Hillsborough. Up the Gulf Coast in the Panhandle, my Pensacola lady bird deed attorney page covers Escambia County, which has the same condominium and coastal insurance questions this county does.
What about searching for a “lady bird deed attorney near me”?
Most people looking for this type “lady bird deed attorney near me,” “deed attorney Clearwater,” or “deed lawyer St. Petersburg.” It is worth knowing what those searches actually return: whoever has the closest pin on the map. Proximity is a reasonable first filter and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What proximity does not tell you is whether the person on the other end has read your declaration of condominium, whether they know Pinellas charges no discretionary surtax, whether they will tell you the truth about the mortgage-and-doc-stamps question instead of picking the convenient answer, or whether they will be the person who answers the phone when your daughter calls in three years. Those are the things that decide whether the deed does its job. Distance decides who comes up first on a map. They are not the same question, and it is worth asking every name on your list the second one.
Who prepares deeds in Pinellas County, and what kind of lawyer do you actually need?
People arrive at this problem from several directions, and they search accordingly. Some look for a real estate attorney in St. Petersburg, because a deed is a real estate document. Some look for an estate planning attorney in Clearwater, because the deed is part of a plan. Some look for an elder law attorney in Clearwater, because the real driver is a nursing home. All three of those are sensible framings and all three can be right.
Deed preparation in Florida is the practice of law when it is done for someone else. A notary cannot prepare it for you. A real estate agent cannot prepare it for you. A title company can prepare deeds in connection with a transaction it is closing, but that is a different service in a different context and it is not estate planning. If someone offers to fill in a deed form for a fee and is not a lawyer, that is a problem for them and eventually for you.
How I Work, and What I Charge
How I approach fees
A lady bird deed on a Pinellas property is $675, flat, recording included. I publish that number because this is a scope I can actually predict.
For anything else — a contested matter, a probate, a title problem, a plan involving more than one property — I am not going to quote you a number on a web page, because a number published without knowing the facts is a number that is wrong for most of the people who read it. I listen first, and in detail, before quoting anything. I offer flat fees wherever the scope of a matter allows it, and where it genuinely cannot be scoped that way, I will explain why. If a deed is not what your situation needs, I will tell you that too, even though it is worth less to me. The first conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation.
There is one other published fee. A review of the recorded lady bird deed with a 30-minute consultation is $475 — the review and that half hour are the whole of it, not a retainer. A probate, an ancillary administration or a corrective deed is separate work, scoped and quoted before it begins. The procedure itself is on my page about what a family does after the owner dies.
You do not have to come to Clearwater or St. Petersburg
I prepare and electronically record Pinellas County deeds from start to finish without you traveling to Court Street or First Avenue North. Signing is arranged near you, with the witnesses and notary handled properly, and the recorded document comes back with its book and page number. For an owner with mobility limits, or for an adult child coordinating from another state, that is usually the whole reason this works.
One attorney, start to finish
This is a solo practice. The person you speak to on the first call is the person who reads your recorded deed, drafts the new one, watches you sign it and answers the phone two years later. There is no associate you have not met and no file handoff. For a document whose entire value shows up years after it is signed, knowing who will still be there matters more than it does on most legal work.
What to bring to a consultation
People ask what the lady bird deed paperwork looks like, or where to find the lady bird deed application. There is no application. This is not something you apply for and nobody approves you — it is a single deed you sign and record, and the paperwork is that deed plus whatever I need to read before I draft it.
Your most recent recorded deed is the important one — not the tax bill, not the property appraiser printout, the deed. Also useful: your mortgage statement if there is one, the declaration and recent assessment notices if it is a condominium, your marriage status and whether any children are minors, the full legal names of the people you want to receive the property, and any existing will or trust so I can make sure the documents do not contradict each other. If you do not have the deed, I can pull it from the county records.
If you would rather work through it before we speak, I keep a Florida lady bird deed preparation checklist setting out what to gather, what Florida law requires on the face of the deed, and the defects that actually break these deeds. What you need varies with what you own. A deeded home turns on the current recorded deed and any mortgage. A deeded condominium adds the declaration and the recent assessment notices. A cooperative unit, or a manufactured home on rented land, raises a prior question — what you actually hold — and that one is answered by the share certificate and the proprietary lease, or by the certificate of title and the lot agreement, rather than by a deed. Bring what you have and we will work out the rest.
Pinellas County Lady Bird Deed: Frequently Asked Questions
Is a ladybird deed the same as a lady bird deed?
Yes. One word or two, it is the same instrument, and both are the informal name for an enhanced life estate deed. The spelling has no legal significance.
What is a ladybird deed in plain terms?
A deed that leaves you in complete control of your home for life and transfers it automatically to the people you named when you die, without a probate case.
Does a ladybird deed avoid probate?
For the property described in it, yes. The house passes at the moment of death by operation of the recorded deed. It does not avoid probate for anything else you own.
Does a ladybird deed override a will?
As to that property, in practical effect yes. The house never becomes part of the estate the will governs, so a will leaving the same house to a different person does not control. Make sure the two documents agree.
Can a ladybird deed have multiple beneficiaries?
Yes. Decide deliberately what happens if one of them dies before you, and whether the survivors should take that share — Florida presumes tenancy in common, so the deed has to say so if you want survivorship.
What are the pros and cons of a ladybird deed?
In favor: total control retained, probate avoided, homestead exemption preserved, Save Our Homes designed to be preserved with the owner named as grantor and grantee, stepped-up basis preserved, no Medicaid look-back, low cost, revocable at will. Against: it covers one property only, it does nothing about incapacity, it does not stop a mortgage or a special assessment, it is a common-law instrument with no statute of its own, and co-beneficiaries who cannot agree end up in a partition suit.
How much does a lady bird deed cost in Pinellas County?
$675 flat with me, recording included. The county’s own recording fee is $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page.
Where do I record a lady bird deed in Pinellas County?
With the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller — 315 Court Street, Room 150 in Clearwater, or 545 First Avenue North in St. Petersburg. Both are open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays. The McMullen Booth Road location is drop-off only.
Can I e-record a deed in Pinellas County?
Yes, through an approved vendor — the Clerk does not accept direct electronic submissions from the public. Most homeowners cannot open a vendor account for a single document.
How long does recording take?
Electronic submissions are typically back within a business day or two, but the Clerk promises no same-day or next-day turnaround. Walking a document into Room 150 is the fastest route.
Does Pinellas County charge a discretionary surtax on deeds?
No. The documentary stamp rate here is the plain statewide $0.70 per $100, with nothing added.
Do I owe documentary stamp tax if my house has a mortgage?
This is genuinely unsettled in Florida. Section 201.02 treats a mortgage balance as consideration on a conveyance, while the Department of Revenue has reasoned that an enhanced life estate deed conveys no present interest at all. No Florida appellate court, Department rule or published advisory has decided the mortgaged case. And a Department advisory issued to another taxpayer is not binding on your transaction — section 213.22 limits it to the person who requested it. If your property is mortgaged, raise it before anything is drafted.
Will my homestead exemption change?
No, on a properly drafted deed. Your exemption continues, and where the deed lists you as both grantor and grantee your Save Our Homes cap is designed not to reset.
Do my children keep my Save Our Homes cap?
Generally no. The cap is tied to homestead status. A child who moves in can establish a new homestead and a new cap, but it starts at the current value, not yours.
Does a lady bird deed protect my house from Medicaid?
It addresses recovery against the probate estate after death, because the house never enters a probate estate. It does not make you eligible, does not protect other assets and does not pay for care.
Does signing one start the five-year look-back?
On the better reading, no, because you have not made a completed gift — you kept the power to sell, mortgage and revoke. Deeding the house to a child outright is a different matter and is a look-back event.
Can I use a lady bird deed on a manufactured home?
Only if you own the land it sits on and the home is permanently affixed and assessed as real property — the “RP” decal is the sign of that. If you rent the lot, the home is personal property titled through the state, a deed conveys nothing, and you transfer it by certificate of title instead.
Can I use a lady bird deed on a condominium?
Yes. Check the declaration for transfer and approval provisions, and know that under § 718.116 a new owner is jointly and severally liable with the prior owner for assessments unpaid at transfer. Milestone inspections and reserve funding can produce special assessments the beneficiary inherits with the unit.
Can a power of attorney sign a lady bird deed?
Only if the power of attorney expressly says so. Florida requires powers of this kind to be enumerated and separately initialed — a general durable power of attorney that is silent does not carry it.
When does a condo building need a milestone inspection?
At 30 years from its certificate of occupancy, then every 10 years, for condominium and cooperative buildings three habitable stories or more. A shorter 25-year trigger is a local option a local enforcement agency may impose — it is no longer an automatic statewide rule for coastal buildings.
How many witnesses does the deed need?
Two, under § 689.01, plus notarization under § 695.03 for it to be recorded. Notarization does not substitute for the witnesses.
Does my spouse have to sign?
If the property is your Florida homestead and you are married, yes — constitutional homestead protections and § 732.401 restrict conveying and devising homestead. A spouse’s rights can be waived deliberately, including under § 732.7025, but not by omission.
Can I sell my house with a lady bird deed?
Yes, and you can refinance it, without your beneficiaries joining. Varano v. Varano confirms the power to convey and Hirschenson confirms the power to mortgage without the remainder beneficiary joining.
Can I change my mind later?
Yes, at any time, without telling or asking the people you named. Record a new deed or convey the property away.
What if one of my beneficiaries dies before I do?
It depends entirely on the drafting. Without a provision covering it, that share can go somewhere you did not intend, including into that person’s own probate.
Does Florida have a transfer on death deed?
Not for real estate. Florida’s transfer-on-death framework reaches securities in beneficiary form and pay-on-death bank accounts, not land. The lady bird deed fills that gap as a common-law instrument.
Should I add my child to the deed instead?
Almost never. That is a present gift — a Medicaid look-back event, an exposure to your child’s creditors and divorce, a reset of your assessment, a loss of part of the stepped-up basis, and a house you can no longer sell without their signature.
Will a title company insure the property afterward?
Generally yes in Florida, though underwriters look carefully at the retained-powers language. Ambiguous drafting is what produces an objection years later, when it can no longer be fixed by the person who signed.
What happens to a reverse mortgage when I die?
It becomes due and payable. The deed removes the probate case, not the loan. Deadlines vary by holder and loan program, the clock starts at the death, and moving early is what preserves the family’s options.
Do you handle Clearwater and St. Petersburg ladybird deeds?
Yes, and everywhere else in the county. The one-word and two-word spellings describe the same instrument, so it makes no difference which one brought you here.
What about a co-op unit?
A Florida cooperative unit is owned through shares in the association plus a lease, not by deed, so a lady bird deed is not the right tool. The interest is transferred by assigning the shares and the lease, subject to the cooperative’s approval rules.
Which court would hear a probate if something went wrong?
The Sixth Judicial Circuit, probate division, which covers Pinellas and Pasco under § 26.021. Florida has no separate probate court.
Do I have to come to an office in Clearwater or St. Petersburg?
No. The deed is drafted, signed near you and electronically recorded, and I send you the recorded copy with its book and page number.
Talk to a Pinellas County Lady Bird Deed Attorney
If you own a home in Pinellas County and you want it to reach your family without a court case, this is usually a short conversation and an inexpensive document. If your situation has a wrinkle in it — a mortgage, a condominium, a second marriage, a child who is not an adult, a nursing home on the horizon — it is a longer conversation, and it is better to have it now than to have your children have it later.
Call (305) 224-6811 or send me a message. The first conversation is free, it carries no obligation, and if a lady bird deed is not what you need I will say so. Consultations are available in English or Spanish.
Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Esquire — Florida Bar No. 107002. Serving Pinellas County and all of Florida.
This page is general information about Florida law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Your own situation depends on facts this page cannot know.