Lady Bird Deed in Florida: How It Works, What It Costs, and When It Does Not Work

A lady bird deed in Florida — formally an enhanced life estate deed — transfers your real property to a named beneficiary at your death without probate, while you keep the unrestricted right to sell, mortgage, lease, rent or revoke it during your life without that beneficiary’s consent or knowledge. It is also written ladybird deed. Florida has no transfer on death deed, and a Florida lady bird deed is what the state uses instead.

It is also the wrong instrument for a meaningful number of the people who ask for one, and the reasons are constitutional rather than technical. This page sets out how the deed works, what Florida requires to make one valid, what it costs, the two situations in which it is void rather than merely inadvisable, and what happens to your property taxes on the day you die — which is the part almost nobody is told. Every proposition below is tied to the statute, rule, advisement or decision behind it.

The short answers

Question	Answer	Where it comes from
Is there a Florida lady bird deed statute?	No. No statute creates it. Florida courts and title underwriters recognise it anyway	Hirschenson (Fla. 3d DCA 2023); Uniform Title Standards 6.10–6.12
Does it avoid probate?	Yes, for the property described in the deed — and nothing else	Title vests in the remainderman at death by operation of law
Can I still sell or mortgage the house?	Yes, alone, without the beneficiary’s consent or knowledge	Hirschenson; Varano (Fla. 4th DCA 2025)
How many witnesses?	Two, and you must sign in their presence. Notarised to be recordable	§ 689.01(1); § 695.03
If I am married, does my spouse have to sign?	On homestead, yes — even if the spouse is not on the title	Art. X, § 4(c), Fla. Const.; Clemons v. Thornton
If I have a minor child?	You cannot use one on homestead, to anybody but your spouse. The deed is void and nothing cures it	§ 732.4017(1) → § 732.4015(1) → § 732.401
Does it trigger the Medicaid five-year look-back?	No. Nothing has been given away while you can still take it back	42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c); DCF ESS Policy Manual § 1640.0613.01
Can Medicaid recover against the house after I die?	Not as Florida law currently stands. Florida recovers from the probate estate only	§ 409.9101(2); § 731.201(14)
Do my heirs get a step-up in basis?	Yes. The property is in your gross estate, and that is what produces the step-up	IRC § 2036(a)(1) → IRC § 1014(a)
Do I file a gift tax return?	No. It is an incomplete gift while you keep the power to revoke	Treas. Reg. § 25.2511-2(c)
Documentary stamp tax if the house is mortgaged?	Generally none on a properly drafted one — the retained powers earn that, not the label	See documentary stamp tax
Does my homestead exemption survive?	Yes during your life. Your Save Our Homes cap does not survive your death	§ 193.155(3); see below
Can a power of attorney sign one for my parent?	Usually not. It takes specifically enumerated, separately initialled authority	§ 709.2202(1); § 709.2202(6)
What do you charge?	$675 flat, including the cost of recording	See what it costs

What is a lady bird deed in Florida?

A lady bird deed is a deed you record now that takes effect at your death. You convey the property to a named beneficiary — the remainderman — while reserving for yourself a life estate together with the express power to undo the whole thing at any time.

Nothing about your daily ownership changes. You live there, you pay the taxes and insurance, you keep the homestead exemption, and you can sell the house tomorrow and spend the proceeds without telling the beneficiary. What changes is what happens on the day you die: title passes to the beneficiary automatically, by operation of law, without a probate case.

The name comes from a teaching example that used the Johnson family, and it has no legal significance. In Florida the accurate name is enhanced life estate deed, and if you are searching for the statute or asking a title company about it, that is the phrase that gets you a useful answer.

What the word “enhanced” is doing

In an ordinary life estate deed, the remainder vests in your beneficiary the moment you sign. From that day you cannot sell, mortgage or refinance without their signature, and if they refuse, or divorce, or go bankrupt, or simply stop speaking to you, you are stuck in your own house.

The enhanced version reserves powers that prevent that from happening: the power to sell, convey, mortgage, encumber, lease or gift the property without the beneficiary’s joinder, the right to keep every dollar of proceeds, and the power to replace or remove the beneficiary entirely. Those reserved powers are not decoration. They are what produces every advantage on this page — the Medicaid treatment, the step-up in basis, the absence of a gift tax return, and the documentary stamp result. Drop them and you have a different instrument with worse consequences.

What your beneficiary actually owns while you are alive

Very little, which is the point. Your beneficiary has no right of possession, no right to object to anything you do, nothing they can give a lender or a buyer, and no enforceable interest at all unless you die without having exercised your powers.

The precise legal characterisation is unsettled, and it is worth stating accurately rather than confidently. In Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of MI, 389 So. 3d 574, 576 n.1 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023), the Third District quoted a commentator’s description of the remainderman’s interest as “at best, vested and subject to defeasance, but arguably contingent” — a characterisation the court repeated rather than adopted as a holding. Title industry materials generally call it a vested remainder subject to divestment. Nothing turns on the label while you are alive. It matters in exactly one situation, and that is if a beneficiary dies before you do.

How does a lady bird deed work in Florida?

Four steps, and only the first two involve you.

1. The deed is drafted and signed. You sign in front of two witnesses and a notary. If the property is homestead and you are married, your spouse signs too. Signing can be done remotely from anywhere in the world under sections 689.01(2) and 117.265.
2. It is recorded in the official records of the county where the property sits. Recording is what makes it good against anyone who later deals with the property, under section 695.01.
3. Nothing happens for years. You own the house, you claim the homestead exemption, you can sell it, refinance it, rent it out, or sign a new deed naming somebody else. Your beneficiary has no say and no notice.
4. At your death, title vests automatically. Your beneficiary records a certified death certificate and an affidavit of death of life tenant, and the public record now shows them as the owner. No probate case is opened for that property.

Two things this sequence does not include are worth naming. There is no court, at any point. And there is no protection if you become incapacitated before you die — the deed operates at death and appoints nobody to act for you before it. That gap is covered under the disadvantages.

Is there a Florida lady bird deed statute?

No. No Florida statute creates, authorises or defines an enhanced life estate deed. Chapter 689, which governs conveyances of land, contains no such section, and neither does chapter 732 or chapter 736. If you have been searching for the statute, that is why you have not found it.

The instrument is assembled from ordinary life estate and remainder principles together with a broad reserved power, and it rests on four things instead of a statute:

• Execution formalities. Section 689.01(1) requires a writing signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses. Section 695.03 requires acknowledgment before a notary or other authorised officer before the clerk will record it.
• Common law. Oglesby v. Lee, 73 Fla. 39, 73 So. 840 (1917), recognised that a grantor may convey while reserving substantial powers over the property, including the power to sell it.
• Modern appellate authority. Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of MI, 389 So. 3d 574, 576 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023), states that “[b]y definition, the enhanced life estate gives the holder or grantee exclusive power to mortgage the property without the joinder of the remainder person.” Varano v. Varano, 415 So. 3d 1100 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025), confirms the distinction from an ordinary life estate, holding that in the absence of a lady bird deed a life tenant cannot convey the property without the joinder of the remainderman. Johnson v. Johnson, 413 So. 3d 872 (Fla. 1st DCA 2025), treats these deeds as subject to the same reformation principles as any other deed where a mutual mistake means the writing does not say what the parties agreed.
• The title industry. Florida Uniform Title Standards 6.10, 6.11 and 6.12, adopted by the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of The Florida Bar on 1 June 2019, address enhanced life estates in non-homestead property, in homestead, and the position of the remainderman. These are what an underwriter actually consults.

Why having no statute matters to you

The drafting carries the entire weight. Where a statute creates an instrument, it supplies the terms the drafter forgot. Nothing supplies them here. A deed that omits the power to mortgage is not a lady bird deed with a gap in it — it is a different instrument with different tax consequences, and the omission surfaces when a bank declines to lend against your house.

The real validity test is whether a title underwriter will insure it. This is the point most consumer pages avoid. An instrument with no statute behind it is worth what the title industry says it is worth on the day your family tries to sell, and the Uniform Title Standards are persuasive rather than binding on any underwriter. We draft to the standards because that is the audience. The comment to Standard 6.10 concedes there is scant judicial authority for the device, which is an honest thing for a title standard to say and a reason to take the drafting seriously rather than a reason to avoid the instrument.

What are the requirements for a valid Florida lady bird deed?

Two witnesses, and a notary to record it

Section 689.01(1) requires that a conveyance of a freehold interest be in writing and signed by the grantor in the presence of two subscribing witnesses. Florida is one of a small number of states that still requires witnesses on a deed at all, which is why out-of-state form packages so often arrive without witness lines.

Notarisation is a separate question governed by a separate statute. Section 689.01 says nothing about it. Section 695.03 requires acknowledgment before a notary or other authorised officer to make the deed recordable. So the sentence “a deed must be notarised to be valid in Florida” is not accurate — notarisation is what lets you record it, and an unrecorded lady bird deed is a practical disaster for other reasons.

Use witnesses who take nothing under the deed. Florida imposes no general disinterest requirement, but the Second District has said a grantee may not generally sign as a witness to a deed, and unlike wills there is no statute saving a deed from an interested witness. The notary may serve as one of the two witnesses, but only if the notary actually signs on a witness line — taking the acknowledgment is a different act.

The powers the deed has to reserve

Nothing in Florida law dictates this language, which is precisely the problem. A deed that calls itself a lady bird deed but reserves the wrong powers is an ordinary life estate deed with a marketing name. To work, the instrument must reserve, on its face:

• The power to sell, convey, mortgage, encumber, lease or gift the property, in fee simple, without the remainder beneficiary’s joinder or consent
• The right to retain all proceeds of any such transaction, absolutely
• The power to divest, replace or add remainder beneficiaries at will
• A remainder that is expressly contingent on the grantor’s death without having exercised those powers
• What happens if a beneficiary predeceases you — see below, because this is the omission that most often puts a share into probate

The legal description, and recording it

A deed conveys the land its legal description identifies — not the street address and not the folio or parcel number. A patently ambiguous description is void and parol evidence cannot rescue it; Heartwood 2, LLC v. Dori, 208 So. 3d 817 (Fla. 3d DCA 2017), held that a unit number, a condominium name and a street address, with no declaration book and page, was not enough. This is why we ask for your recorded deed rather than a tax bill: the description gets copied forward from the instrument that already conveyed the property.

The deed must then be recorded during your lifetime. Under section 695.01(1) an unrecorded conveyance is not good against creditors or a later purchaser for value without notice, and an unrecorded deed found in a drawer after death is an invitation to litigation even where it is technically valid. One reassurance about old deeds: section 95.231 cures a missing seal, a missing witness and defects in acknowledgment five years after recording — but it does not cure a missing homestead joinder, because that defect is constitutional rather than a formality of execution. Florida deed preparation covers the clerk’s requirements in full.

The two situations where a lady bird deed does not work

Florida homestead is protected by the state constitution rather than by statute, and the protection runs against the owner as much as for them. Two rules in Article X, section 4(c) do different jobs, and a great deal of published material runs them together.

If you are married, your spouse has to sign — even if the house is only in your name

Article X, section 4(c) provides that the owner of homestead real estate, joined by the spouse if married, may alienate the homestead by mortgage, sale or gift. The trigger is being married. It is not whose name appears on the title. A married person whose name is the only name on the deed still needs the spouse to join.

Florida courts have applied this to exactly this instrument. Clemons v. Thornton, 993 So. 2d 1054 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008), held a deed conveying a remainder interest in homestead to a daughter ineffective without the wife’s joinder — the grantor kept the remainder, and at his death the widow took a life estate with a vested remainder in the descendants under section 732.401, which is the opposite of what he intended. Isaacs v. Federal National Mortgage Association, 373 So. 3d 1172 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022), required joinder even though the husband had left and established a separate residence.

A spouse can waive the devise restriction by signing waiver language under section 732.7025, and where you want to name someone other than your spouse that waiver is what makes it possible. But note what section 732.7025(2) says: the waiver is not a waiver of the restriction on alienation without joinder. The spouse waives, and then still signs the deed. Those are two separate acts, and a form that collapses them into one accomplishes neither.

If you have a minor child, you cannot use one on your homestead at all

This is the rule that catches the most people, and almost nothing published online explains why it is true. The explanation is a statute from 2010 that most summaries of this subject never mention.

Section 732.4017(1) provides that an inter vivos transfer of homestead property is not a devise — but only “if the transferor fails to retain a power, held in any capacity, acting alone or in conjunction with any other person, to revoke or revest that interest in the transferor.”

Read that against what a lady bird deed is. The retained power to revoke is not an incidental feature; it is the entire instrument. It is what makes the gift incomplete for federal gift tax purposes, what keeps the property in your estate for the step-up, and what keeps Medicaid from treating it as a transfer. And it is precisely the power section 732.4017(1) says you must not have retained.

So the deed fails the safe harbour and is treated as a devise. Once it is a devise, section 732.4015(1) applies: the homestead is not subject to devise if the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child, except that it may be devised to the spouse if there is no minor child. The chain runs one way and ends in one place:

• Survived by a spouse, no minor child — you may name your spouse. You may name anyone else only with a section 732.7025 waiver, and your spouse must still join the deed.
• Survived by a minor child — the homestead cannot be devised to anyone other than your spouse, and where there is a minor child it cannot be devised at all. A lady bird deed naming a child, a sibling or a trust is void as a devise.
• What happens instead — the homestead descends under section 732.401: the surviving spouse takes a life estate with a vested remainder to the descendants per stirpes, or may elect within six months to take an undivided one-half interest as a tenant in common.

There is no cure and no waiver. Section 732.7025 lets a spouse waive. Florida law provides no mechanism by which a minor child’s homestead interest can be waived, by anyone, including a parent. The five-year curative statute in section 95.231 does not reach it either. And this is not a theoretical worry about what a court might do decades later: Florida Uniform Title Standard 6.12 addresses this precise problem and underwriters apply it. In practice the deed does not fail in a courtroom. It fails at a closing, when your children try to sell and discover nobody will insure the title.

The honest caveat, because it belongs here: no Florida appellate court has squarely decided whether the section 732.4017 analysis applies to an enhanced life estate deed, and a minority reading treats the deed as an inter vivos transfer that never engages the devise restriction at all. We do not draft on the minority reading, and neither does the title industry. Where there is a minor child, we use a different instrument.

Who can use a lady bird deed in Florida, and who cannot

Your situation	Can you use one?	Why	What we would use instead
Single, adult children, homestead	Yes	No spouse, no minor child, no devise restriction	—
Married, leaving the homestead to your spouse	Yes	Devise to a spouse is permitted where there is no minor child	—
Married, leaving the homestead to a child	Yes, with two signatures	§ 732.7025 waiver and spousal joinder in the deed itself	—
Survived by a minor child	No	§ 732.4017(1) → § 732.4015(1). Void. No waiver exists	Trust, drafted around § 732.401
Blended family, children from a prior marriage	Legally yes, practically risky	Whoever takes at your death owns it outright and may leave it to anyone	Trust with a life interest for the spouse, remainder to your children
You want someone to manage the house if you lose capacity	Not on its own	The deed operates at death. It appoints nobody during life	Deed plus a durable power of attorney, or a trust
Beneficiary is a minor	Not directly	A minor cannot hold or convey title; a guardianship of the property results	Trust named as remainderman
Beneficiary receives SSI or Medicaid	No	Inheriting real property can end means-tested benefits	Special needs trust as remainderman
Beneficiary has creditors, or is mid-divorce	Caution	Protected while you live; exposed the moment title vests	Trust as remainderman
Several children as co-beneficiaries	Yes, with care	They take as tenants in common. Any one can force a sale by partition	Survivorship language, or a trust
Rental, vacation home or vacant land	Yes	Non-homestead. No joinder issue, but no Art. X, § 4 creditor protection and a 10% assessment cap rather than 3%	—
Property outside Florida	No	A Florida deed conveys Florida land, and most states do not recognise this instrument	Trust, to avoid ancillary probate in that state

Lady bird deed compared with the alternatives

Five instruments do overlapping jobs in Florida and they are not interchangeable. A will does not avoid probate at all — it is the document that tells the probate court who gets what. A traditional life estate deed avoids probate but vests the remainder immediately, so you cannot sell or refinance without your beneficiary’s signature, the gift is complete and reportable, and the transfer starts the Medicaid clock. The row that decides most cases is not probate avoidance — every one of these avoids probate in some form. It is what the instrument costs you in control, in tax basis, and in flexibility if your circumstances change.

Feature	Lady bird deed	Revocable living trust	Traditional life estate deed	Quitclaim to a child now	Will only
Avoids probate on the house	Yes	Yes, if retitled into it	Yes	Yes	No — a will guarantees probate
You keep full control during life	Yes	Yes	No — needs remainderman joinder	No — you no longer own it	Yes
Change beneficiaries without consent	Yes, alone	Yes	No	No	Yes
Covers assets other than the house	No	Yes — anything retitled	No	No	Yes
Plans for your incapacity	No	Yes — successor trustee	No	No	No
Triggers the Medicaid 5-year look-back	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Exposed to Medicaid estate recovery	No, as Florida law stands	No, if it passes outside probate	No	No	Yes — it is a probate asset
Step-up in basis at your death	Yes	Yes	Yes, as to the retained life estate	No — carryover basis	Yes
Gift tax return required now	No	No	Yes — the remainder is a completed gift	Yes	No
Homestead exemption kept during life	Yes	Yes	Yes	No, once you are off title	Yes
Save Our Homes cap survives your death	No (unless spouse, minor child or dependant)	No (same exceptions)	No	Depends who claims it	No
Private, or public record	Public from the day it records	Private	Public	Public	Public once probate opens
Typical cost	$675	$2,000–$5,000	Similar to a lady bird deed	$575	Varies

Lady bird deed vs. a revocable living trust

Cost is the obvious difference and the least important one. The real difference is scope and incapacity. A trust covers every asset you retitle into it and names a successor trustee who can act the moment you cannot. A lady bird deed covers one parcel of real estate and appoints nobody.

If your home is your only significant asset and you have a durable power of attorney in place, the deed usually does the job for a fraction of the cost. If you own property in more than one state, want distributions staggered rather than handed over outright, want privacy, or have a beneficiary who cannot safely receive property directly, the trust is doing work the deed cannot do at any price. The two also combine — a lady bird deed naming your trust as remainderman is a legitimate structure. See the full comparison.

Lady bird deed vs. a quit claim deed to your children now

A quitclaim deed transfers the house today. That single difference produces four bad outcomes: you lose control and cannot sell without your children’s agreement; you lose the homestead exemption on a property you no longer own; you make a completed gift that starts the Medicaid clock; and your children take your original cost basis rather than a stepped-up one, which is usually the most expensive of the four.

The numbers make it concrete. A house bought in 1988 for $60,000 and worth $600,000 today, deeded to a child now, carries a $60,000 basis; a sale after your death produces roughly $540,000 of taxable gain. The same house passing under a lady bird deed comes to the same child at $600,000 basis, and an immediate sale produces almost none. See the deed-by-deed comparison.

Does Florida have a transfer on death deed?

No. Florida did not adopt the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act, and chapter 689 contains no transfer-on-death provision for real estate. Chapter 711 has a similar name but governs transfer-on-death registration of securities and requires a registering entity such as a broker, which does not exist for land. Florida does allow beneficiary designations on bank accounts under section 655.82 and on motor vehicle titles, which is part of why people reasonably assume real estate works the same way.

The lady bird deed is Florida’s answer. If you arrived here searching for a Florida transfer on death deed or a beneficiary deed, this is the instrument you were looking for.

What are the disadvantages of a lady bird deed in Florida?

Seven, in the order they actually cause problems.

1. It covers one property and nothing else

A lady bird deed passes the real estate described in it. Your bank accounts, your brokerage account, your car, your personal property and any other parcel you own are untouched, and if they need probate they will get it. Families are sometimes told the deed is their estate plan. It is one instrument in a plan that still needs a will, and usually a durable power of attorney and a health care surrogate.

2. It does nothing about incapacity

This is the largest gap and the least discussed. The deed operates at death. If you develop dementia at eighty-one and the house has to be sold to pay for care, the deed appoints nobody to sell it. Without a durable power of attorney that specifically covers the transaction, your family is looking at a guardianship proceeding. A revocable trust closes this gap; a lady bird deed does not.

3. The homestead restrictions can make it void

Covered in full above. A minor child makes it void as to a non-spouse remainderman, with no waiver available, and a missing spousal joinder makes it ineffective. These are the failure modes that surface years later at a closing.

4. Multiple beneficiaries can end in a forced sale

Name three children and they take as tenants in common unless the deed says otherwise. One wants to sell, one wants to rent it out, one wants to live in it. Any one of them can force a sale of the whole property through a partition action, and the others pay for the litigation out of the proceeds. This is the most common way a lady bird deed produces a lawsuit, and it is a drafting question rather than bad luck.

5. It is a public record from the day it is filed

Anyone with a browser can look up your county’s official records and see who you named. A trust keeps that private. In a blended family, or where you have named some children and not others, that visibility can cause the argument years before you die.

6. It is not asset protection

During your life the property is still yours, and if it is not homestead your creditors can reach it exactly as before. The deed adds no protection against your own creditors, and once title vests at your death it is exposed to your beneficiary’s creditors, divorce and bankruptcy. See creditors and the IRS.

7. Your Save Our Homes cap dies with you

The deed avoids probate. It does not carry your property tax assessment cap to your children, and on a long-held Florida home that number is frequently larger than any probate fee saved. It is set out below because nothing else published on this subject seems to say it.

Do you pay documentary stamp tax on a lady bird deed in Florida?

Generally no, on a properly drafted one — and the reason is worth understanding, because it is the drafting that produces the result rather than the name on the document.

Section 201.02(1)(a) taxes deeds conveying an interest in real property at 70 cents for every $100 of consideration — 60 cents in Miami-Dade — and defines consideration to include the amount of any mortgage whether or not the underlying indebtedness is assumed. Read that clause alone and a lady bird deed on a mortgaged house looks expensive. On a $300,000 balance it would be $2,100.

But the mortgage clause answers the second question, not the first. The threshold question is whether any present beneficial interest was transferred at all. If nothing presently passes, there is no taxable conveyance for a mortgage balance to be measured against, and the size of the loan becomes beside the point. The Florida Supreme Court stated the principle in Crescent Miami Center, LLC v. Department of Revenue, 903 So. 2d 913 (Fla. 2005): the tax requires both a purchaser and consideration, and a change in the form of ownership without an exchange of value is not taxable.

The Department of Revenue has applied that reasoning to encumbered property repeatedly. Technical Assistance Advisement 12B4-001 (2012) concerned residential property encumbered by a mortgage with an outstanding balance and found no tax on a deed of a life estate interest, drawing no distinction based on the encumbrance. TAA 20B4-004 (16 October 2020) considered an enhanced life estate deed to three daughters reserving broad powers to grant, sell, convey, reconvey, mortgage, encumber, lease and divest, and advised that no tax was due because the deed transferred no present beneficial interest. Two 1993 advisements reached the same result for encumbered property deeded into an owner’s own revocable trust, and Rule 12B-4.013(28)(a) exempts a deed to a trustee to the extent of the grantor’s beneficial ownership whether or not the property is encumbered.

The retained powers do the tax work, not the label

Calling a deed a lady bird deed does not make it one. To hold the analysis above, the instrument has to reserve the powers listed under what the deed must reserve.

Drop those powers and the result flips. An ordinary life estate deed presently transfers a vested remainder to a third party — Kach v. Cooley, 201 So. 2d 254 (Fla. 1st DCA 1967) — and where the property is mortgaged, the outstanding balance is taxable consideration under section 201.02(1)(a) and Rule 12B-4.013(16). Same family of instrument, same house, same mortgage; a four-figure difference in tax, decided entirely by which powers the drafter reserved. This is the clearest illustration on this page of what a $349 form cannot do for you.

Two honest qualifications, because they belong on a page a client will rely on. Under section 213.22 an advisement binds the Department only as to the taxpayer who requested it, and Rule 12-11.007(1) provides that a taxpayer may not rely on an advisement issued to somebody else. The advisements above show a consistent departmental position across three decades; they are not a licence. And no Florida court has ruled on the documentary stamp treatment of an enhanced life estate deed. On a large balance, requesting your own advisement before recording converts a well-grounded position into a binding one for a modest cost.

What happens to your homestead exemption and Save Our Homes cap?

During your life, nothing changes

Recording a lady bird deed does not cost you the homestead exemption and does not reset the Save Our Homes assessment cap. Section 193.155(3) provides that no change of ownership occurs where, after the transfer, the same person is entitled to the exemption as before. You keep the life estate, you keep occupying the property, and section 196.041(2) treats a beneficial interest for life as equitable title for exemption purposes. Florida Attorney General Opinion 2005-52 confirms it. Your assessment goes on rising by no more than 3 percent a year exactly as before.

At your death, the cap is lost

Your death is a change of ownership. The property is reassessed at just value as of 1 January of the following year, your children must apply for their own homestead exemption if they qualify, and the cap you spent twenty or thirty years accumulating does not travel with the house.

The size of that deserves numbers, because “reassessed at just value” understates it. A Miami-Dade homestead bought in 1998, assessed at $180,000 today and worth $700,000, is carrying a Save Our Homes benefit of roughly $520,000. On the first tax bill after reassessment the property tax on that house can more than triple. Families who inherit a mortgage-free home and then cannot afford to keep it are usually meeting this number, not a mortgage.

Section 193.155(3) preserves the cap in three situations and only three: transfer by operation of law to a surviving spouse; transfer under section 732.401 to a minor child; and transfer at the owner’s death to someone who is a permanent resident of the property and legally or naturally dependent on the owner. An adult child living elsewhere fits none of them.

There is one partial answer. Section 193.155(8) allows a person who held a Florida homestead exemption in any of the three immediately preceding years to carry up to $500,000 of accumulated benefit to a new homestead. A child who owned and homesteaded their own Florida house, moves into the inherited one and makes it their homestead may be able to port their own benefit into it. That is their benefit moving, not yours surviving, and the provision reads as designed for voluntary moves rather than inheritances — confirm it with the county property appraiser, because homestead administration is handled county by county.

None of this is a reason to avoid a lady bird deed. The same reassessment happens whether the house passes by deed, by trust, by will or through probate. It is a reason to know the number before your family finds it on a tax bill, and it is frequently the fact that decides whether children keep a house or sell it.

Lady bird deeds and Medicaid: two different questions

Almost every page on this subject runs these together. They have different answers, different authorities and different levels of certainty.

Does it trigger the five-year look-back?

No. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c) the look-back penalty applies to a disposal of assets for less than fair market value. Because you keep the unrestricted power to sell the property or revoke the deed, nothing has been disposed of — you can take it back tomorrow. There is no completed transfer, so no transfer penalty. The Florida Department of Children and Families addresses this in its ESS Policy Manual at section 1640.0613.01, which does not treat the creation of an enhanced life estate deed as a transfer of assets.

This is the instrument’s central advantage over what families do instead. Deeding the house outright to a child is a disposal, and inside the sixty-month window it produces a penalty period calculated by dividing the uncompensated value by the average monthly private-pay nursing facility rate. A traditional life estate deed causes a similar problem, because the remainder it gives away is a completed gift.

Two limits worth stating. The homestead is not a countable asset for eligibility in the first place, subject to the federal home equity limit, so for many applicants this deed is not what qualifies them. And a later step — transferring the retained life estate to the remainderman once a parent enters a facility, which is exactly the move families make — is a different transaction and may well be an uncompensated transfer. Creating the deed is safe. Unwinding it is not obviously safe.

Can Florida recover against the house after death?

Not as the law currently stands, and the qualification matters. Section 409.9101(2) accomplishes Florida’s Medicaid estate recovery by the Agency for Health Care Administration filing a statement of claim against the estate as provided in part VII of chapter 733, and section 731.201(14) defines an estate as the property of a decedent that is the subject of administration. That is the probate estate. Property that vests in your beneficiary outside probate never enters it.

Why we write “currently.” Federal law at 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(b)(4)(B) permits a state to define “estate” far more broadly — to reach property passing by joint tenancy, survivorship, life estate, living trust or other arrangement. Several states have taken it. Florida has declined it. That is a policy choice reversible by the Legislature or a state plan amendment, not a permanent feature of Florida law, and a page that promises your family permanent immunity is promising something Florida has not given. Any plan built on this should be reviewed if the definition changes.

Does a lady bird deed give my heirs a step-up in basis?

Yes, and the mechanism is worth understanding because it is the same feature that produces every other advantage.

Because you retain the right to possess and enjoy the property for life, the full value is included in your gross estate under IRC § 2036(a)(1) — confirmed for retained possession and use in Estate of Whitt v. Commissioner, 751 F.2d 1548 (11th Cir. 1985). Inclusion in the gross estate is what triggers IRC § 1014(a), which gives your beneficiary a basis equal to the property’s fair market value on the date of your death.

For almost every Florida family, estate-tax inclusion costs nothing — the federal exemption is far above the value of a house — and the basis adjustment is worth a great deal. A house bought for $60,000 and worth $600,000 passes with a $600,000 basis, so a sale shortly after your death produces little or no capital gain. Deed the same house to the same child during your life and IRC § 1015 gives them your $60,000 basis instead.

And no gift tax return is required. Under Treasury Regulation § 25.2511-2(c) a gift is incomplete wherever the donor reserves the power to revest the property in themselves, so nothing is complete when you sign, no Form 709 is due, and none of your lifetime exclusion is used. A traditional life estate deed is the opposite: the remainder is a completed gift, reportable, and the annual exclusion does not help because a remainder is a future interest under IRC § 2503(b).

One honest note: no published IRS ruling addresses lady bird deeds by name. This rests on general principles of §§ 2036 and 1014 applied to the retained interest, which is a well-settled application but not a named safe harbour. The step-up also runs the other way — if the property has lost value, basis steps down. See the full tax analysis.

Can I sell, refinance or rent the property after signing?

Yes, all three, without your beneficiary’s consent, signature or knowledge. That is the defining feature of the instrument, and Hirschenson confirms the life tenant’s exclusive power to mortgage without the remainder person joining. You may take out a HELOC, a reverse mortgage, or sell the house outright and keep every dollar, and your beneficiary simply receives nothing.

Two practical frictions are worth expecting. First, a title company or lender unfamiliar with the instrument may ask for the remaindermen’s signatures anyway, even where the deed plainly does not require them. That is an underwriting preference rather than a legal requirement, and it is usually resolved by pointing the underwriter at Uniform Title Standard 6.10 — but on a closing timetable it costs days you did not budget. Second, an existing mortgage is unaffected: signing a lady bird deed does not remove you from the loan, and the loan does not become your beneficiary’s problem until you die.

Recording the deed does not trigger a due-on-sale clause in the ordinary case. The Garn-St Germain Act, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from accelerating a loan on residential property of fewer than five units on a list of transfers that includes transfers to a spouse or children and transfers to a relative on the borrower’s death.

Can I revoke or change a lady bird deed?

Yes, unilaterally, at any time, for any reason, and without telling anyone. Your beneficiaries do not have to agree and have no standing to object. This is the single most reassuring fact about the instrument and the one clients most often do not believe.

Mechanically, you do it by recording a new instrument — a deed conveying the property back to yourself in fee simple, or a new enhanced life estate deed naming a different beneficiary. Do not simply tear up your copy: the recorded deed is the one that counts, and the public record has to be corrected by another recorded document. Do not rely on a will either. A will cannot revoke a recorded deed.

One trap for anyone tidying up an estate plan late in life. If you release the retained powers within three years of death — for instance by signing a later deed relinquishing the right to revoke — IRC § 2035(a) can pull the property back into your gross estate, and the transfer may become a completed gift for gift tax purposes. Undoing a lady bird deed is a decision to take advice on rather than a form to sign.

Will a title company accept a lady bird deed?

Florida title underwriters generally do, and the Uniform Title Standards are the reason. Standard 6.10 states that the holder of an enhanced life estate in non-homestead property may convey or encumber the fee simple during life without the remainderman; 6.11 applies the same power to homestead subject to spousal joinder; 6.12 addresses when the remainderman actually takes fee simple at death.

Three qualifications matter more than the general answer. The standards are persuasive, not binding — each underwriter sets its own policy, and a deed drafted without the full reserved powers gives an underwriter a reason to decline. Federal tax liens are treated differently from state judgment liens regardless of what the standards say. And where the homestead devise restrictions were violated, no amount of good drafting helps: Standard 6.12 exists precisely to stop an underwriter insuring a remainderman who took nothing.

Because the instrument has no statute behind it, underwriter acceptance is the practical test of validity. That is a reason to have the deed drafted to the standards, not a reason to avoid the instrument.

What if my beneficiary dies before I do?

It depends entirely on what your deed says, and a deed that says nothing creates the exact problem the instrument was meant to prevent.

Florida’s anti-lapse rules apply to wills, not deeds. So if you name three children and one predeceases you, and the deed is silent, that child’s one-third share may pass to their own estate — and require a probate case to sort out. A well-drafted deed answers the question on its face: either the share passes to the surviving beneficiaries, or it passes to that beneficiary’s own descendants per stirpes. Both are legitimate; the deed has to pick one.

The simplest protection is to name a contingent beneficiary, and to review the deed whenever your family changes. Because you can revoke at any time, updating it is cheap. Discovering the gap after a death is not.

What if I name more than one beneficiary?

They take as tenants in common in equal undivided shares unless the deed expressly says otherwise. Section 689.15 abolished the right of survivorship in joint tenancies in Florida except where the instrument expressly provides for it, so a deed naming three children with no survivorship language gives each of them a one-third interest that passes through their own estate when they die.

The consequence people do not anticipate is that any one co-owner can force a sale of the whole property through a partition action, and the others cannot stop it. One child who needs cash, or one child’s creditor or ex-spouse who acquires their share, can put the family home on the market over everyone else’s objection.

Where you want the house kept in the family rather than divided, a trust as remainderman does what co-ownership cannot: it names someone to decide, and it can say who may live there and on what terms. Where equal shares really are the goal, the deed should at least specify survivorship or per stirpes so the arrangement does not fragment at the first death.

Can a power of attorney sign a lady bird deed in Florida?

Usually not, and the reason surprises the families who ask — which is almost always a family whose parent has begun to decline and who assume the durable power of attorney signed years ago covers it.

Section 709.2202(1) provides that an agent may exercise certain authorities only if the principal signed or initialled next to that specific enumeration in the document itself. Three items on that list are exactly what a lady bird deed does: creating or changing rights of survivorship, creating or changing a beneficiary designation, and making a gift. A power of attorney granting broad authority to “convey real property” reaches none of them. It authorises a sale. It does not authorise an instrument that names who inherits.

Two further conditions sit on top: section 689.111 permits a homestead deed by an attorney in fact only where the power was executed with the same formalities as a deed, and does not remove the constitutional joinder requirement; and section 709.2202(6) provides that a power of attorney signed by a Florida-domiciled principal and witnessed remotely cannot grant those enumerated authorities at all.

The uncomfortable but useful conclusion is that a lady bird deed is a document to sign while the owner is unquestionably competent. The full analysis, including what happens when an agent exceeds the authority granted, is at can a power of attorney sign a lady bird deed in Florida.

Creditors, the IRS, and the limits of the protection

A lady bird deed is a probate-avoidance instrument. It is not an asset protection instrument, and it is sold as one often enough to be worth separating out.

• During your life, the homestead protection is the protection. Article X, section 4(a) exempts Florida homestead from forced sale and bars any judgment lien on it. That comes from the property being your homestead, not from the deed. If the property is not homestead, a lady bird deed gives it no protection at all while you are alive, because you still own it.
• Your beneficiary’s creditors cannot reach it while you live. Because the beneficiary holds nothing they can convey and you can divest them at any moment, a judgment against your child does not attach to the house. Uniform Title Standard 6.10 addresses this directly, and it is a genuine advantage over adding a child to your deed — which exposes the house to that child’s creditors, divorce and bankruptcy from the day it records.
• Your unsecured creditors cannot reach it after your death. Florida creditor claims are made against the probate estate under part VII of chapter 733. Property that vests outside probate never becomes available to that process.
• Homestead protection can pass — to the right people. Article X, section 4(b) provides that the exemptions inure to the surviving spouse or heirs of the owner. That word does real work: naming a remainderman who is not an heir can forfeit protection that would otherwise have continued.
• The IRS is different, and this is the exception nobody publishes. Under 26 U.S.C. § 6321 a federal tax lien attaches to all property and rights to property belonging to the taxpayer, and Florida’s homestead protection does not stop it the way it stops a state judgment. In United States v. Voshelle (M.D. Fla. 2024) the court allowed the IRS to reach property conveyed by a lady bird deed, reasoning that the grantor’s retained powers meant he still effectively owned it.
• A deed signed to defeat a creditor is voidable. Section 726.105 reaches a transfer made with actual intent to hinder, delay or defraud, and the badges-of-fraud analysis applies here as to any other conveyance. Signing one after a lawsuit has started is not planning.

Can a lady bird deed disinherit my spouse?

No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is describing a plan that will fail. Two separate rules stop it.

The first is the homestead joinder requirement above — your spouse has to sign the deed for it to convey homestead at all. The second is the elective share. Under section 732.2035, property conveyed by a lady bird deed enters the elective estate on two independent grounds: subsection (5) captures transfers that were revocable by the decedent at death, and subsection (6)(a) captures transfers where the decedent retained possession or use. A lady bird deed satisfies both, and your surviving spouse’s 30 percent elective share is calculated including that property.

Older material sometimes cites Kelley v. Hill, 481 So. 2d 1311 (Fla. 2d DCA 1986), for the proposition that a deed reserving a life estate with a power of sale removes the home from the elective share calculation. That is no longer good law. The 1999 amendments replaced the old elective share with the current augmented estate framework, which expressly reaches revocable and retained-interest transfers. See a surviving spouse’s rights in Florida.

What does my family have to do after I die?

Title vests in your beneficiary at the moment of death by operation of law. Nothing has to be filed to make that happen and no court is involved. What remains is proving it to the public record so that a buyer, lender or title underwriter can see it.

1. Record a certified death certificate in the county where the property sits — order one without the cause of death, since the recorded version is public.
2. Record an affidavit of death of life tenant identifying the deed by book and page, the life tenant, the date of death and the remainderman now holding title. No statute compels it; every underwriter wants it.
3. Expect the underwriter to ask for more — a no-estate-tax-lien affidavit, a continuous marriage affidavit, or evidence that the homestead devise restrictions were satisfied. This is where a hidden minor-child or joinder problem finally surfaces.
4. Apply for a new homestead exemption by 1 March if a beneficiary will live there. The exemption does not transfer, and see Save Our Homes for what happens to the cap.
5. Deal with the mortgage. The loan does not disappear, but Garn-St Germain bars acceleration on a transfer to a relative resulting from the borrower’s death, so the beneficiary can keep paying or refinance.
6. If there are several beneficiaries, they now own it as tenants in common and any one can force a sale by partition.

Our page on a lady bird deed after death in Florida works through the sequence, the forms and the county-by-county variations in detail.

Can a lady bird deed be contested in Florida?

Yes. An enhanced life estate deed can be challenged like any other conveyance, and the grounds are the familiar ones: the owner lacked capacity when they signed, someone in a position of trust procured the transfer through undue influence, the signature was forged, or the homestead was conveyed without the spouse joining. Johnson v. Johnson, 413 So. 3d 872 (Fla. 1st DCA 2025), confirms these deeds are also subject to reformation where a mutual mistake means the instrument does not say what the parties agreed.

Deadlines matter more than grounds, and they are short enough to catch families who wait. The grounds, the proof required and the time limits are set out at can a lady bird deed be contested in Florida, and if the instrument in question is something other than a lady bird deed, see setting aside a Florida deed.

How much does a lady bird deed cost in Florida?

We prepare and record a Florida lady bird deed for a flat $675, and that figure includes the cost of putting it on the public record — the clerk’s charges under section 28.24 and the nominal stamp an instrument must carry before the clerk will accept it. There is no second invoice for recording, and no separate charge for remote online notarisation if you are out of state or out of the country.

What	Cost	Paid to
Lady bird deed, prepared and recorded	$675 flat	Lorenzo Law — includes recording
Quit claim deed, prepared and recorded	$575 flat	Lorenzo Law — includes recording
County recording charges	$10.00 first page, $8.50 each later page, $1.00 per name past the fourth	The county — covered by our fee
Documentary stamp tax on consideration	Generally none on a properly drafted lady bird deed — see above	The state, by the parties — not included in any fee
Online form service	Roughly $349, recording usually extra	A form vendor
Florida probate on a $450,000 home instead	Statutory attorney compensation of roughly $13,500, plus court costs and a personal representative’s commission	§ 733.6171

The comparison with a $349 form service is a fair question, and the honest answer is about scope rather than drafting quality. What the lower figure does not include is anybody reading your recorded deed to see how title is actually held, asking whether you have a minor child, checking whether your spouse must join, confirming the reserved powers are drawn well enough to hold the documentary stamp and Medicaid treatment, or telling you that a lady bird deed is the wrong instrument for what you are trying to do. That last one is not hypothetical. Most of the calls we take about a deed that failed are about a deed that was drafted competently and was simply the wrong deed.

The fees above are flat fees for standard matters — one Florida property, a clean chain of title, straightforward parties — and are confirmed in writing after we review the current recorded deed. They are not a quote for your matter and not a representation about the tax treatment of any particular transfer.

How we decide whether a lady bird deed is right for you

Three questions, asked in this order, before anything is drafted. You can answer all three before you call.

1. The spouse and minor child check

Are you married, and do you have a minor child? This decides whether the instrument is available at all, and it is the one question a form cannot ask you. A minor child ends the analysis for homestead. A spouse means a joinder and, if the remainderman is anyone other than the spouse, a section 732.7025 waiver drafted alongside the deed. See the homestead section.

2. The blended family assessment

If you leave the house to a second spouse, they own it outright at your death and may leave it to anyone, including their own children. If you leave it to children from a first marriage, your spouse’s elective share and homestead rights still apply. Neither outcome is what most people picture. A lady bird deed is a blunt instrument and a blended family usually needs a sharper one.

3. Title, mortgage and saleability

We read the recorded deed to confirm how title is actually held, check the legal description against it rather than against a tax bill, look at the mortgage for the documentary stamp analysis, and draft the reserved powers to satisfy the Uniform Title Standards. A deed that is legally sound but not insurable is not a solution, because the failure surfaces at a closing your family cannot postpone.

Myths and facts about Florida lady bird deeds

• Myth: it is the same as a living trust, only cheaper. Fact: a trust covers every asset you retitle and plans for your incapacity. A lady bird deed covers one property and does nothing if you lose capacity.
• Myth: it keeps my plan private. Fact: it is a public record from the day it is filed, searchable by anyone. A trust is private.
• Myth: I will lose my homestead exemption. Fact: you keep it during your life under section 196.041(2).
• Myth: my children inherit my low tax bill. Fact: they do not. The Save Our Homes cap is lost at your death and the property is reassessed at just value, with only three narrow exceptions. This is the most expensive misconception on the list.
• Myth: it protects the house from my creditors. Fact: homestead protection does that, and only for homestead. The deed adds nothing, and a federal tax lien can reach it anyway.
• Myth: there is such a thing as a “lady bird trust.” Fact: there is not. It is a deed. The confusion is understandable because both avoid probate, but a trust can hold accounts and investments and this cannot.
• Myth: my beneficiaries have to agree before I sell. Fact: they have no say whatsoever, and no right to notice.

Where we prepare lady bird deeds

Lorenzo Law works from offices in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale. Deeds are a matter of state law and county recording practice, so we prepare and electronically record them for property anywhere in Florida, and you do not need to come to either office — signing can be done remotely under sections 689.01(2) and 117.265 wherever you are, including outside the United States.

• Miami-Dade County — Miami, Coral Gables, Hialeah, Doral, Aventura, Homestead, Kendall
• Broward County — Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines, Coral Springs, Hallandale Beach, Davie
• Palm Beach County — West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, Jupiter
• Central Florida — Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Lake counties, including Orlando, Winter Park, Lake Nona and Altamonte Springs. See our Central Florida practice
• Elsewhere in Florida — Hillsborough, Pinellas, Duval, Lee, Collier and Sarasota

Recording requirements are statutory and the same statewide, but the office differs: in most counties it is the clerk of the circuit court, in Broward it is the county’s Records, Taxes and Treasury Division, and in Orange County it is the Comptroller rather than the clerk. Hablamos español.

Talk to a Florida lady bird deed attorney

If you want a lady bird deed prepared, or you have one already and want to know whether it does what you were told it does, call 305-224-6811 or send us the current recorded deed. We will tell you whether this is the right instrument for your family, what the documentary stamp position is on your property, and what it costs, before any work starts. There is no charge for that conversation.

See also: our Florida lady bird deed attorney page for the flat-fee service, what is included and how long it takes.

More on Florida lady bird deeds

• Hiring a lady bird deed lawyer in Florida — the flat fee, what is included, and how long it takes
• Lady bird deed tax consequences — capital gains, the step-up, gift tax and the homestead exemption
• The Florida lady bird deed form — what the document says and the powers it must reserve
• Lady bird deed vs. living trust — which one your situation needs
• Lady bird deed vs. quit claim deed — transferring now versus transferring at death
• Lady bird deed after death — what your family files, and in what order
• Can a power of attorney sign one? — the § 709.2202 enumeration problem
• Can a lady bird deed be contested? — grounds, proof and time limits
• Florida deed preparation — witnesses, recording and what the clerk requires

Frequently asked questions

What is a lady bird deed in Florida?

A lady bird deed, formally an enhanced life estate deed, is a Florida deed that transfers real property to a named beneficiary at the owner’s death without probate, while the owner keeps the unrestricted right to sell, mortgage, lease or revoke it during life without the beneficiary’s consent. It is also written ladybird deed. No Florida statute creates it; it is recognised by Florida courts and by the Florida Uniform Title Standards.

What is the downside of a lady bird deed in Florida?

Seven, set out above. The three that cause the most trouble are that it plans for death but not for incapacity, that it is void as to a non-spouse beneficiary if you are survived by a minor child, and that your Save Our Homes assessment cap is lost at your death and the property reassessed at just value.

Can I do my own lady bird deed in Florida?

Nothing stops you. Section 454.18 confirms a person may act on their own behalf. The risk is not permission but accuracy: no statute supplies the reserved powers if you leave them out, and a deed missing them is an ordinary life estate deed with different tax and Medicaid consequences. The two failures we see most from online forms are missing witness lines and a missing homestead joinder, and the second produces a deed that conveys nothing.

How much does a lady bird deed cost in Florida?

Ours is a flat $675, including the title review, homestead and joinder analysis, documentary stamp analysis, drafting, execution and the cost of recording. Online form services advertise around $349 with recording usually billed separately. Documentary stamp tax on consideration is separate from any fee, and on a properly drafted lady bird deed there is generally none.

Do you pay taxes on a lady bird deed in Florida?

Not when you sign it. There is no gift tax and no Form 709, because the retained power to revoke makes the gift incomplete under Treasury Regulation § 25.2511-2(c). Documentary stamp tax is generally not due even where the property is mortgaged, because no present beneficial interest passes. You keep your homestead exemption during life. The tax that does arrive is a property tax one, at your death, when the Save Our Homes cap is lost.

Does a lady bird deed avoid Medicaid estate recovery in Florida?

As Florida law currently stands, yes. Section 409.9101(2) recovers by filing a claim against the probate estate under part VII of chapter 733, and property passing by lady bird deed never becomes a probate asset. Florida has declined the broader definition of “estate” that 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(b)(4)(B) permits, and that is a policy choice the Legislature could reverse.

Can I use a lady bird deed if I have minor children?

Not on your homestead, to anyone other than your spouse. Because the deed retains a power to revoke it does not qualify for the safe harbour in section 732.4017(1), so it is treated as a devise, and section 732.4015(1) prohibits devising homestead where the owner is survived by a minor child. The deed is void and the homestead descends under section 732.401. No waiver exists for a minor child.

Does a lady bird deed override my will?

As to the property described in the deed, yes. That property passes automatically at your death and never becomes part of the probate estate your will governs, so a contrary provision in the will has nothing to operate on. Changing the beneficiary requires a new recorded deed, not a new will.

How do I revoke a lady bird deed in Florida?

By recording a new instrument — either a deed conveying the property back to yourself in fee simple, or a new enhanced life estate deed naming someone else. You do not need your beneficiary’s agreement and do not have to tell them. Destroying your copy does nothing; the recorded deed is what counts.

Can I use a lady bird deed on a condo or a rental property?

Yes to both. A condominium works the same way, though the legal description must reference the declaration book and page — a unit number and address is not sufficient. A rental or vacation home is non-homestead, so there is no spousal joinder issue, but also no Article X, section 4 creditor protection, and the assessment cap is 10 percent under section 193.1554 rather than 3 percent.

Is there such a thing as a lady bird trust?

No. “Lady bird trust” is a common misnomer for this deed. The confusion is understandable because both avoid probate, but a lady bird deed is strictly a real estate instrument, while a trust can hold bank accounts, investments and personal property. You can, however, name a trust as the remainder beneficiary of a lady bird deed, which is often the right answer where a beneficiary is a minor, has creditors, or receives means-tested benefits.

I live out of state. Can I still sign one?

Yes. Section 689.01(2) allows the two subscribing witnesses to be present and sign by audio-video communication technology, and under sections 117.209(3) and 117.265(1) a Florida online notary physically in Florida may notarise regardless of where you are, including outside the United States. Both mechanisms have to be arranged together — a session producing a valid notarisation but only one witness has not produced a deed.

This page is general information about Florida law, not legal advice for any particular situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes, constitutional provisions, administrative rules and tax rates change, and documentary stamp tax, income tax, Medicaid, homestead and elective share questions depend on facts specific to the property and the parties. Fees shown are flat fees for standard matters, cover the legal work and recording costs described and no other charge, and are confirmed in writing after we review the current recorded deed. Nothing here is a quote for your matter or a representation about how any tax authority will treat a particular transfer.