Online Estate Planning Florida

This page explains what online estate planning services include, which documents you actually need, what everything costs, how the process works step by step, where you have to physically be when you sign, and the specific places where do-it-yourself platforms fail under Florida law. If your question is narrower — whether an online will is legally valid here at all — that is covered in depth in my guide to Florida online wills.

Key Takeaways

• Estate planning online is not the same as a DIY template. The difference is whether a Florida-licensed attorney drafts and reviews the documents, and whether anyone is responsible for whether they work.
• Consultation, drafting and review are handled remotely in every case. Most signings are remote too — but the execution rules differ by document and by your circumstances, and one power-of-attorney provision in particular is worth knowing about before you sign.
• Most people need four documents, not one. A will alone leaves the largest gap in planning: what happens if you are alive but cannot act for yourself.
• Flat fees, quoted before any work begins. $675 for a will; $1,500 for the will plus the four incapacity documents, both all-in; a basic revocable living trust from $2,500.
• Where you physically sit at the signing matters, and it is the question almost no page answers.
• A living trust only works if it is funded. Signing a trust and never retitling anything into it is the most common failure in online trust creation.
• Florida homestead defeats most template plans. The Florida Constitution restricts who you may leave your home to, and national platforms do not account for it.
• One attorney, start to finish. This is a solo practice. The person you speak to on the first call drafts your documents and sits on the signing.

What Is Estate Planning, and What Do These Services Include?

Estate planning is the work of deciding two things in advance: who receives what you own after you die, and who makes decisions for you if you are alive but unable to make them yourself. Most people think only about the first. The second is where families actually get into trouble.

That second half is also the difference between estate planning vs will, and it is why estate planning is not the same as a will. A will is one document inside a plan. What estate planning includes is the will plus the instruments that operate while you are still alive — which is why who needs estate planning is a broader group than people assume. If you own anything, or have anyone who would have to make decisions for you, you are in it.

Online estate planning services vary enormously in what you receive, and the word “online” hides the difference. Some sell you a questionnaire and a PDF. What I provide is a drafted, attorney-reviewed Florida estate plan delivered through video meetings instead of office visits — online estate planning documents, but drafted by a Florida attorney rather than generated by software.

One note before the table, because two of my services carry the same price: the $675 below is a will. The Lady Bird deed service described above is also $675, and it is a different thing — a deed covering one property, not a will covering your estate.

Two things about that table are worth saying plainly, because they are where online services usually go quiet. First, the will and the package are all-in — $675 and $1,500 cover every cost associated with the service, with nothing added at the end. Second, the trust is the one that moves: $2,500 is where a basic revocable trust starts, and genuine complexity raises it. Either way the figure is flat and quoted before I start, not an hourly estimate. You know the number before you decide.

What Estate Planning Documents Do You Need?

This is the question behind most first calls, and the answer is more consistent than people expect. For the large majority of Florida families, the same four legal documents for estate planning do almost all of the work.

You will sometimes see this described as the five most important estate planning documents, counting the HIPAA authorization separately. The label matters less than the logic: two of them govern what happens after you die, and three govern what happens while you are alive but unable to speak for yourself.

That second category is the one people skip. A person who buys a will online and stops has planned for the least likely of the two events. Incapacity is far more common than sudden death, and it is the situation in which a missing document costs your family a guardianship proceeding.

Do I need all of them, or can I start with one?

You can start with one, and sometimes that is the right call — a new parent who needs a guardian nomination immediately, or someone facing surgery next week who needs a power of attorney and nothing else. But basic estate planning documents are cheaper as a set than as separate purchases, and drafted together they name a consistent group of people in a consistent order. Bought one at a time from different sources, they contradict each other.

Are these Florida-specific?

Yes, and that is not a formality. Florida estate planning documents follow Florida execution requirements, Florida homestead rules and Florida’s own terminology. A national template’s power of attorney, for instance, may not include the specific authority Florida requires for certain acts — which your bank discovers at the worst possible moment.

Start from your goal, not from the document list

Most people find it easier to say what they are trying to accomplish than to name the instrument that accomplishes it. That is the right way round — the document follows the goal. Here is where each of the common ones leads.

None of this is a checkbox exercise. The table tells you which conversation to start; which documents you end up with comes out of that conversation.

Powers of Attorney and Health Care Documents

The incapacity documents get less attention than wills and deserve more, so it is worth taking them one at a time. Incapacity planning is the half of estate planning nobody markets, and it is the half that gets used most often — you are far more likely to have a stroke at seventy than to die suddenly at fifty.

Can you get a power of attorney online in Florida?

Yes. An online power of attorney is straightforward to arrange — the document can be drafted and executed remotely, and it is one of the more common single-document requests I handle, often urgently, when a family realizes a parent is declining and nobody has authority to pay their bills.

What you should be careful about is the free version. Searching for a power of attorney online returns dozens of blank forms, and this is the document where a generic form does the most damage. It is an instrument that hands another person control of your money. Florida law requires specific language for certain powers, and a form that omits it produces a document that looks complete and fails at the bank counter. If you have been comparing services to find the best online durable power of attorney, the thing worth comparing is not the interface — it is whether a Florida attorney is reading your circumstances before the document is written.

Services that let you create power of attorney online are everywhere. The cost of having one drafted properly instead is small compared to the cost of a guardianship, which is what happens when there is no valid one.

The remote-signing trap in Florida powers of attorney

This is the most important thing on this page that almost nobody discloses, and it is the one place where signing remotely genuinely costs you something.

A Florida power of attorney must be signed by you, witnessed by two people, and notarized (§ 709.2105(2)). Separately, seven categories of authority — including the power to make gifts, change beneficiary designations, and create or amend a trust — are effective only if you separately sign or initial next to each one (§ 709.2202(1)).

Here is the trap. Under § 709.2202(6), if you were domiciled in Florida at the time you signed, a power of attorney witnessed remotely — by a witness who is not in your physical presence — is not effective to grant any of those seven powers. The document remains perfectly valid for ordinary financial authority; the defect is in the scope of what your agent can do, not in the instrument itself. But the powers families most often need in a crisis are gone, and nobody finds out until an agent tries to use one.

Both subscribing witnesses have to be physically present with you. The statute is written in the singular — it defeats the grant wherever the document is witnessed “by a witness who is not in the physical presence of the principal” — so one witness in the room and one on a screen is enough to strip the powers. One physically present witness is not sufficient.

That reading is confirmed by the remote-witnessing statute itself. § 117.285(7) provides that remote witnessing satisfies any requirement that a witness be subscribing, attesting, or in the principal’s presence at the signing — “except as set forth in s. 709.2202.” Remote witnessing cures the presence requirement everywhere else in Florida law. It expressly does not cure it here.

Now the part almost everyone gets backwards. Remote notarization and remote witnessing are not the same thing, and this provision turns only on the witnessing. Florida’s online notarization law lets the notary appear by audio-video link, and § 709.2202(6) says nothing at all about where the notary is. So a power of attorney can be notarized remotely and still carry all seven powers — provided both subscribing witnesses were physically in the room with you.

Which is exactly how I run it: the notary can be remote, the witnesses are not. It is the reason I ask about your signing setup before scheduling rather than after, and the reason a fully automated remote platform can hand you a power of attorney that quietly does less than you think it does.

More detail on how these work in Florida is on my page about the Florida power of attorney.

What is a health care surrogate?

A health care surrogate is the person you name to make medical decisions for you if you cannot make them yourself. The document that names them is called a designation of health care surrogate, and in Florida it is the instrument that keeps medical decision-making inside your family rather than in front of a judge.

The designation must be signed in front of two adult witnesses, and no notary is required (§ 765.202). The person you name as surrogate cannot serve as a witness, and at least one witness must be someone other than your spouse or a blood relative.

If you never sign one, Florida does not simply leave your family stranded — § 765.401 supplies a proxy in a fixed statutory order, beginning with a court-appointed guardian, then your spouse, then an adult child. But that order is the legislature’s choice, not yours; it may not name the person you would pick; and where adult children disagree, it settles nothing without a court. My page on designating a health care surrogate covers the requirements in full.

Health care surrogate versus medical power of attorney — what is the difference?

Mostly vocabulary. The health care surrogate vs medical power of attorney question comes up constantly, and the answer is that many states call this same document a medical power of attorney or a health care proxy. Florida calls it a designation of health care surrogate, and if you have moved here from another state you may hold a document under the other name. It is often still effective, but it is worth having looked at rather than assumed — and the surrogate designation is distinct from your durable power of attorney, which handles money rather than medicine. Two different documents, two different jobs, frequently two different people.

Do I need a living will as well as a health care surrogate?

They do different things and most plans include both. The surrogate designation names who decides. The living will states what you want in specific end-of-life circumstances, so your surrogate is carrying out your instructions instead of guessing. Naming someone without telling them what you want leaves them to make the hardest decision of their life without guidance. See my page on the Florida living will.

How Much Does Estate Planning Cost in Florida?

Cost depends almost entirely on whether a trust is involved. A will on its own is $675. The core document package — the will plus a durable power of attorney, living will, health care surrogate designation and preneed guardian designation — is $1,500, and both of those figures are all-in: they include every cost associated with the service. A basic revocable living trust starts at $2,500 and rises with complexity, which is why that one is quoted rather than listed. All of them include the drafting, the video meetings, the review session and the signing.

Nationally, how much estate planning costs varies enormously by market and by how the firm bills. Ask three firms how much an estate planning attorney is and you will get an hourly rate, a package price and a refusal to quote until after a consultation. What makes the Florida number hard to pin down in search results is that most firms publish nothing at all — which is why the question keeps getting asked.

How much does it cost to make a will?

A will on its own is rarely the right purchase, which is why I quote plans rather than documents. How much a will costs in Florida: $675 on its own, or $1,500 bundled with the four incapacity documents that make it function. A will bought alone leaves the gap described above — you have planned for your death and not for the years before it.

How much does an estate planning lawyer cost compared to a DIY service?

That last row is the whole argument, and I would rather state it once than repeat it. The cost of planning is not measured against zero. It is measured against what happens if the documents do not work — a probate administration paid out of the estate, at a multiple of what the plan would have cost.

Why does a trust plan cost more than a will plan?

Because more work goes into it. A trust is a longer and more complex instrument, it comes with a pour-over will rather than replacing one, and if it is taking real property it needs a deed to move that property in. I price that deed separately rather than folding it into the trust fee — $575, recording fees included — so you can see what each part costs. The rest of the difference is the funding work around it, the part that makes the trust function rather than sit in a drawer.

What is a flat fee estate plan?

One where the price is agreed in advance and does not change with the number of meetings, emails or revisions. Every plan on this page is flat-fee. I do not bill hourly for planning work, because a client deciding whether to call with a question should not be doing arithmetic first.

Are estate planning fees tax deductible?

For most individuals, no. The deduction for miscellaneous itemized expenses that once covered some planning fees was suspended by the 2017 federal tax act, and fees for personal estate planning are generally not deductible on a personal return. Fees allocable to income-producing property or to a business can be treated differently. This is a question for your CPA on your specific return, not one to settle from a web page.

Is online estate planning cheaper than meeting in person?

My fees are the same either way. Working remotely saves you the drive, the parking and the half-day off work — not the legal fee. Anyone advertising a discount for going virtual is telling you something about how much attorney involvement the remote version includes.

How Estate Planning Online Works, Step by Step

Start to finish, how long estate planning takes is usually two to three weeks for a will-based plan and three to five for a trust-based one. The limiting factor is almost never the drafting. It is how quickly the asset information comes back and how soon we can get everyone to the signing. Those figures run to the signing, not past it. Anything that has to happen afterwards — retitling accounts into a trust, or getting a deed recorded with the county — moves on the schedule of the bank, brokerage or clerk’s office involved rather than mine.

What you need on your end: a device with a working camera and microphone, a reliable internet connection, an email address you check, and a valid government-issued photo ID for the signing.

Which parts of estate planning can actually be done remotely?

“Online” is not one legal process, and treating it as one is where people get into trouble. Advice, drafting and review are not governed by any execution rule at all — those stages are handled remotely in every case. Only the signing step is constrained by statute, and it is constrained differently for each document. Here is what that actually looks like.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: a Florida estate plan can be almost entirely remote and still have one document that ought to be signed with somebody physically in the room. Which one, and why, is something I tell you on the first call — before anything is drafted, not after it is signed.

What to Have Ready Before Your First Call

You do not need to prepare anything to book the first call. But if you want to arrive ready, this is the estate planning checklist I would give you — the same list I work from on the call, and a fair answer to what to bring to an estate planning meeting whoever you end up hiring.

What you own

• Real property: where it is, roughly what it is worth, whether there is a mortgage, and how the deed is titled.
• Bank and brokerage accounts: institution, rough balance, and whether anyone else is on the account.
• Retirement accounts and life insurance: who is currently named as beneficiary, and whether a contingent beneficiary is named.
• Business interests, if any.
• Anything outside Florida — especially real property in another state or country.

Who matters

• Who should receive what, in what shares.
• Who should settle your estate, and a backup.
• Who should handle money if you cannot, and a backup.
• Who should make medical decisions, and a backup.
• If you have minor children: who should raise them, and who should manage their money. My page on planning for parents of minor children covers both decisions.

What you already have

• Any existing will, trust, power of attorney or deed — including documents from another state or from an online service.
• Any prior marriage, divorce decree, prenuptial agreement or support obligation.

That is the whole estate planning documents checklist, and it is shorter than most people fear. Two notes on using a checklist for estate planning. First, the backups matter as much as the primaries — a plan naming one person for each role is one death or one falling-out away from failing. Second, do not let gathering documents stop you from calling. Most people who tell me they are “not ready yet” have been not-ready for several years. We can start with what you know and fill in the rest.

You will find plenty of printable versions of this online. I do not publish a fillable one, and the reason is not coyness: a checklist cannot tell you that your condo is titled in a way that defeats your will, and a form that produces false confidence is worse than no form.

How should you send me sensitive documents?

Ask me before you send anything. The material on that checklist — account numbers, a Social Security number, dates of birth, deeds, existing wills — is exactly what identity theft runs on, and ordinary email is not a good place for it.

So: call or message me first, and I will tell you the secure method to use for what you are sending. There is nothing on this page to upload to, deliberately. If any law firm page invites you to send that kind of material without first telling you how it is protected, that is worth a second thought before you do it.

Where You Have to Be When You Sign

This is the question that decides whether a remote signing will work for you, and almost nothing written on the topic answers it.

Where you are physically located at the moment of signing is not a technicality. It affects which execution route is available, and getting it wrong is the kind of mistake that surfaces years later in a probate courtroom, when the person who could explain what happened is gone.

Three different people have to be in the right place, and the rules are not the same for each.

So the three situations resolve like this:

• You are in Florida. Everything is available, remote or in person.
• You are a Florida resident temporarily out of state — the snowbird in Ohio in July, the client visiting family for a month. This works. The notary is in Florida; you can be anywhere. The instrument should state that you intend to execute it in and under the laws of Florida. And spending part of the year elsewhere does not change your domicile: a Florida domiciliary who is temporarily away — even one who dies while away — remains a Florida domiciliary for purposes of whether the will and trust are valid, absent an actual intent to abandon Florida.
• You are outside the United States. You may still sign, and a foreign passport can serve as your identification. But your remote witnesses cannot be abroad with you — they have to be in the United States. In practice that means either witnesses joining from the U.S., or two witnesses physically present with you wherever you are.

The practical rule: tell me where you will physically be sitting on the day we sign, before we schedule it. That one piece of information determines the route, and it costs nothing to ask about in advance.

There is a second reason this matters. Signing formalities are not paperwork — they are the entire basis on which a court later decides whether your documents are valid. A will that fails its execution requirements does not get partially honored. It fails, and Florida’s intestacy statutes decide who inherits instead of you.

Who can notarize a will, and does a will even need one?

A common misconception is worth clearing up first: you may have read that a notary may not notarize a last will and testament. That is not the rule in Florida. A notary has no role in making a will valid here — that comes from the signature and the witnesses — but a notary is required for the self-proving affidavit, which is the piece that spares your family from tracking down witnesses years later.

So the question of how to notarize a will is really a question about that affidavit, and about who may serve. The people who sign as witnesses and the person who notarizes are performing different jobs, and there are restrictions on who may do each. Getting that combination wrong is one of the quieter ways a DIY signing goes bad, and it is the reason I run the execution myself rather than sending you to a notary service with instructions.

Setting Up a Living Trust Online in Florida

A great deal of the demand in this area is not about wills at all. People want to know how to set up a trust online, whether they can create a trust online, and what online trust creation actually involves.

Can you create a trust online in Florida?

Yes. An online revocable living trust can be drafted, reviewed and executed remotely — but not with fewer formalities than a will, which is a point almost every online service gets wrong.

Under Fla. Stat. § 736.0403(2)(b), the testamentary aspects of a revocable trust signed by a Florida domiciliary — the provisions that give trust property away at or after your death — are invalid unless the trust was executed with the same formalities Florida requires for a will under § 732.502(1): your signature at the end, and two witnesses signing in your presence and in the presence of each other.

Since essentially every revocable living trust exists to distribute property at death, the practical rule is simple: a Florida resident’s trust has to be signed like a will. Remote execution of a trust is no easier than remote execution of a will here, and a trust signed casually — the way a document service will let you sign it — can fail exactly where it matters.

One important limit on that rule, and it is good news if you moved here: § 736.0403(2)(b) applies only if you were a Florida domiciliary when you signed. A trust you executed in another state, while living in that state, under that state’s law, does not become defective merely because you later moved to Florida. The requirement is keyed to where you were domiciled at execution, not to where you die.

One clarification on terminology, because search results confuse it. To create trust online, or set up trust online, can mean two entirely different things: buying a trust document from a website, or hiring an attorney who drafts it and handles the meetings remotely. The first gives you a file. The second gives you a plan.

What “living trust online” leaves out

Every service selling an online living trust will produce a trust instrument. Almost none will do the part that makes it work.

A revocable living trust controls only the assets actually retitled into it. That is called funding, and it means:

• A deed moving your residence into the trust, prepared correctly for Florida and recorded in the county where the property sits. If you are married, your spouse must join in that deed — homestead cannot be conveyed into a trust by one spouse alone (Art. X, § 4(c), Fla. Const.).
• Retitling bank and brokerage accounts into the name of the trust.
• Reviewing beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance so they work with the trust rather than against it.
• Bringing new assets into the plan as you acquire them.

An unfunded trust is the most expensive document in estate planning. The client paid for it, believed the plan was done, and the family still ends up in probate — with the added indignity of a trust in a drawer that was supposed to prevent exactly that. When someone tells me they set up a trust three years ago, my first question is always what was retitled into it. The answer is usually nothing.

My trust plans include a written funding checklist, with instructions specific to your accounts. Where the trust is taking real property, I prepare and record the deed that moves it in — $575, recording fees included, quoted alongside the trust rather than buried inside it. That checklist is also where we review your beneficiary designation forms, because a retirement account pointing at the wrong person will override everything the trust says. More on how these work is on my page about the living trust in Florida.

How do you fund a trust?

You fund a trust by changing the ownership of each asset from your name to the trust’s name. A deed for real property, a retitling form for each bank and brokerage account, and a review of every beneficiary designation so the two systems agree. There is no single filing that does it — how to fund a trust is a list, worked through one asset at a time.

Who should be your successor trustee?

The successor trustee meaning is simpler than the title suggests: it is the person who takes over managing the trust when you die or can no longer manage it yourself. While you are alive and well, you are almost always your own trustee. The successor is the one who steps in afterward, and choosing them is one of the two or three decisions in the plan that actually matter.

What a successor trustee does, in practice: gathers the trust assets, pays the final bills and taxes, and distributes what remains according to the trust’s terms. That is roughly the same work a personal representative does in a probate estate, which is where the successor trustee vs executor question comes from — the roles are similar, but the trustee acts under the trust document without court supervision, and the executor acts under the will with it. It is common for the same person to hold both jobs.

Choosing a successor trustee comes down to judgment and durability rather than expertise. Some practical points:

• Can a successor trustee be a beneficiary? Yes, and frequently is — an adult child who inherits and also administers. It becomes a problem when that person has interests genuinely opposed to the other beneficiaries, which is worth thinking about before it happens rather than after.
• Does a successor trustee get paid? They are generally entitled to reasonable compensation. Family members often waive it. The trust can also set the terms.
• Co-trustee or successor trustee? A co-trustee serves alongside you now; a successor serves after you. Naming two adult children as co-trustees sounds fair and often is not — it means every decision needs two signatures, sometimes from people who disagree.
• Name backups. A single named successor with no alternate is one death or one declination away from a court appointment.

Do you need a trust, or is a will enough?

Not everyone needs a trust, and I will tell you if you do not. A revocable living trust generally earns its cost where there is real property in more than one state, a blended family, a beneficiary who should not receive money outright, a privacy concern, or a strong preference to keep the estate out of court. For a straightforward Florida estate where the house is the main asset, a lady bird deed alongside a will sometimes accomplishes the same result for a fraction of the cost.

That conversation is the first call. It is not a sales conversation — there is a real answer, and it depends on what you own.

Can I provide for a pet in my Florida estate plan?

Yes. Florida recognizes a pet trust, which lets you set aside funds for an animal’s care and name someone to spend them. It is a real trust with a named caretaker, a funding amount and a plan for what happens to anything left over — not a line in a will asking a relative to be kind.

Clients raise this more often than people expect, usually after watching an animal go to a shelter because nobody had arranged otherwise. Most pet trust attorney work is small and straightforward, and it folds into a plan you were making anyway. If you have an animal that would outlive you, mention it on the first call.

What if a beneficiary has a disability?

Leaving money outright to someone who receives needs-based benefits can disqualify them from those benefits — an inheritance intended to help does the opposite. The instrument that solves this is a special needs trust, and it is one of the clearest cases where a template cannot substitute for advice, because the drafting has to satisfy benefit-program rules as well as Florida trust law. I cover it separately on my page about the Florida special needs trust. If this applies to your family, raise it on the first call — it changes the shape of the whole plan.

How do you divide assets in a blended family?

Carefully, and with the conflict named out loud. The standard plan — everything to my spouse, then to the children — quietly disinherits the children of a first marriage. Once assets pass outright to a surviving spouse, that spouse can leave them to anyone, including their own children or a later partner. Nothing legally obliges them to honor an understanding reached at the kitchen table years earlier.

What is fair in a second marriage is a question I cannot answer for you, and neither can software. What I can do is make sure the documents reflect whatever answer you reach, usually through a trust that provides for the surviving spouse during life and directs what remains to named children afterward. Blended family inheritance issues are among the most common causes of the probate litigation I handle, and nearly all of them trace back to a plan that assumed goodwill would hold.

Wills and Trusts as One Coordinated Plan

Most people searching for a will and trust online are looking for a complete plan rather than a single document, and that instinct is right. Whether you searched for an online will and trust, an online trust and will, or a trust and will online, you are describing the same thing: one coordinated set rather than assorted paperwork.

Wills and trusts are not alternatives to choose between. In almost every trust-based plan they work together — the trust holds and distributes the assets, and the pour-over will catches anything never retitled into it and directs it there. Whether you think of it as wills and trusts or trusts and wills, the pairing is the point.

Buying wills and trusts online as separate products from different vendors is how people end up with instruments that contradict each other. The same applies to the health care documents: a living will and trust bought years apart, from different sources, will often name different people. Shopping for online wills and trusts one item at a time optimizes the price of each document and the coherence of none of them.

Your will also names the person who will settle your estate. Most states call that person the executor; Florida calls the same role the personal representative, and you will see both terms used interchangeably.

What is a pour-over will, and why does a trust plan include one?

A pour over will is the safety net under a trust. It is a short will that says, in effect: anything I still owned personally at my death goes into my trust, to be distributed under its terms. You will see it written both ways, hyphenated and not; it is the same document.

That is the whole of what is a pour over will — the pour over will meaning is right there in the name. Assets you still held personally “pour over” into the trust.

Every trust-based plan should include one, for a reason worth stating plainly. Funding is never perfect. You will open an account and forget to title it in the trust’s name, or buy something in the last year of your life, or inherit money from a relative. Whatever is sitting outside the trust when you die has to get in somehow, and the pour-over will is what directs it there.

Does a pour-over will avoid probate?

No, and this is where the pour over will vs will comparison gets misunderstood. Anything that actually passes through the pour-over will goes through probate first, and only then into the trust. It is a catch mechanism, not a bypass.

Which is exactly why funding matters so much. A trust-based plan where nothing was retitled produces the outcome the client was trying to avoid — the whole estate flows through the pour-over will, into probate, and only then into the trust. The pour-over will is there to catch the one account you missed, not to carry the entire estate.

If You Just Moved to Florida

New Florida residents are one of the largest groups I work with, and moving to Florida is one of the few life events that genuinely requires re-examining an estate plan rather than just updating a name.

Florida differs from most states in ways that reach directly into a plan drafted elsewhere:

• Homestead. Florida’s constitutional homestead protection is unusually strong, and it comes with restrictions on who you may leave your home to. A devise that was perfectly ordinary in your prior state can be ineffective here.
• Terminology and execution. Your health care proxy is a health care surrogate designation here, and Florida’s execution requirements are its own.
• No state estate or inheritance tax. Florida imposes neither, which sometimes means a plan built around another state’s tax structure is now carrying complexity it no longer needs. See my page on Florida inheritance tax.
• Your prior state may still have a claim on you. Domicile is a legal question, not just a mailing address, and some states pursue it.

Do I need to establish Florida residency first?

No. You can sign a Florida estate plan before your move is complete, and people frequently do — the plan is drafted for where you are going, not where you have been.

What it takes to establish residency in Florida is a separate exercise from planning, and worth doing properly if you are leaving a state with an income or estate tax. The usual steps are filing a declaration of domicile, getting a Florida driver’s license and vehicle registration, registering to vote here, and applying for the homestead exemption on your residence. Florida residency requirements are not onerous. What makes them matter is the state you left: several are aggressive about auditing a claimed change of domicile, and the evidence they look at is where you actually spend your time and keep your life, not what you filed.

If you are moving to Florida for tax reasons, or if asset protection is part of why you came, say so on the first call — both change what the plan should look like, and the homestead exemption in particular is worth getting right in the first year rather than the third.

Does my out-of-state will still work in Florida?

Usually — but there is one exception that catches people, and it is worth reading carefully.

A will validly executed in another state is generally recognized in Florida under § 732.502(2). The exception is a handwritten (holographic) will. Several states — Louisiana and Texas among them — recognize a will in the testator’s own handwriting without witnesses. Florida does not, and Florida applies its own law as of the date a Florida domiciliary dies. The Fourth District held exactly this in Caveglia v. Heinen, 359 So. 3d 745 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023): a holographic will valid where it was signed was invalid in Florida because the testator had become a Florida domiciliary before death.

So if you brought a handwritten will with you, treat it as though you have no will at all until it is replaced. That is not a scare tactic — it is the holding.

What about the trust I signed before I moved?

Your trust is on firmer ground than your will, and for a reason worth knowing. Florida’s requirement that a revocable trust be signed with will formalities applies only to settlors who were Florida domiciliaries at the time of execution. A trust you validly executed in another state, while living there, stays enforceable as to its testamentary provisions after you move. Florida does not reach back and invalidate it.

What still needs review is whether the trust works here — Florida homestead rules, the elective share, and whether the assets ever got retitled are all separate questions from whether the instrument is valid.

Where DIY Platforms Fail in Florida

People looking for a LegalZoom alternative are usually not looking for a cheaper template. They started one and hit something the software could not answer.

National platforms are built to serve fifty states, which means they are built to the common denominator. Florida is not a common-denominator state. Four provisions in particular catch template plans, and they catch them silently — the document looks finished, and nobody finds out until someone dies.

Is LegalZoom good for estate planning in Florida?

For a genuinely simple situation — one person, modest assets, no real property, no blended family, no beneficiary with special circumstances — a well-executed template can produce a valid Florida will. I would not pretend otherwise. And the related question, whether you can do your own estate planning, has the same answer: legally, yes. Nothing requires you to hire anyone, and plenty of people reasonably want to know how to write a will without a lawyer.

The problem is that the platform cannot tell you whether your situation is simple. That determination is the legal work. A questionnaire cannot spot that your daughter is going through a divorce, that the condo is titled in a way that defeats the plan, or that naming your son as both trustee and beneficiary creates a conflict with your other children. Software does not ask the follow-up question, because it does not know one is needed.

What does an estate planning attorney do that a document service cannot?

Three things, and they are the same thing at different points in time.

Before drafting: ask what you did not think to mention. Most of what changes a plan comes out of a question the client did not expect.

During drafting: exercise judgment on the parts that are not obvious — how to structure a gift to a beneficiary who cannot manage money, whether a trust is worth its cost for you, what happens if your named personal representative dies first.

Afterward: be responsible for the result. A document service’s terms disclaim legal advice and any responsibility for outcomes. That is not a criticism; it is what they are. But it means that if the plan fails, the failure is yours.

Is an Online Will Valid in Florida?

Yes — online wills are legal in Florida, and one can be entirely valid here. Whether yours is depends on execution, not on where the document came from. Florida law sets specific requirements for signing and witnessing, and a separate set of rules for wills executed and stored electronically.

That subject deserves more room than a service page should give it, and I have written it out in full: Florida online wills — legal, but only if you do this covers the witness requirements, what a qualified custodian is and how to check one, the video recording that decides whether a remote signing survives a challenge, the screening questions Florida requires before you can sign remotely, and which services actually work here.

The short version: the online route has more requirements than signing in person, not fewer. That is the opposite of what most people assume, and it is why the execution step is the part I do not delegate.

Two details worth knowing. Florida requires strict compliance with will formalities — there is no “close enough” doctrine, and courts have refused to admit wills over small execution defects. And for an electronic will to be self-proved, it must be held by a qualified custodian: a person domiciled in Florida or an entity organized here, carrying either a $250,000 surety bond or equivalent liability coverage (§§ 732.524, 732.525). If the audio-video recording of your signing session cannot later be produced, the will loses its self-proved status.

When I Will Not Do This Remotely

Remote execution is not right for every client, and part of what you are paying for is somebody willing to say so.

• Capacity is uncertain. If there is any question whether the person signing fully understands what they are doing, that assessment does not happen well over video, and a will signed in those circumstances invites a challenge.
• There are signs of pressure or undue influence. A family member who arranges the meeting, sits just off camera, and answers questions directed at the client is a pattern I have seen in litigation more than once.
• The client is a vulnerable adult, or the circumstances suggest they may be. This is not a matter of judgment alone — § 117.285(5) requires a screening protocol before a will, a revocable trust with testamentary aspects, or a health care directive can be witnessed remotely. The signer is asked, on the record, whether they are under the influence of anything impairing decisions, whether a condition or disability impairs daily living, and whether they need assistance with daily care. If the answer to any of those is yes, the document can only be validly witnessed by people physically present. The notary must also ask who helped you get onto the call, who helped prepare the documents, where you are, and who is in the room with you.
• A challenge is foreseeable. An estranged child, a recent second marriage, a beneficiary being deliberately reduced — where a will contest is likely, I want the execution as unimpeachable as possible.

Turning away a remote signing costs me a convenient appointment. Doing one that should not have happened costs your family a probate litigation. I handle probate disputes as well as planning, which is a large part of why I hold this line: I see what these cases look like from the other end.

One Attorney, Start to Finish

This is a solo practice, and that is a deliberate choice worth understanding when you are choosing an estate planning attorney.

At a larger firm, the person you meet is frequently not the person who drafts your documents, and neither may be the person who handles the signing. Intake goes to a paralegal, drafting to an associate, and the attorney whose name is on the door reviews it briefly at the end. There is nothing improper about that model. But it is not what you thought you were buying.

Here, the attorney on the first call drafts the documents, runs the review meeting, sits on the signing, and answers the phone when you call two years later with a question. There is no handoff because there is no one to hand off to.

What should you look for in an online estate planning attorney?

If you have been searching for an estate planning attorney near me and wondering whether the remote route gives something up, this is the section that answers it. What an estate planning attorney does is set out above; what to ask one is below. There is no single right answer on how to choose an estate planning attorney, but there are questions worth asking anyone you are considering, including me:

1. Are you licensed in Florida, and what is your bar number? Estate planning is state law. A national service is not admitted anywhere.
2. Will I speak to the same attorney throughout? Ask directly, and ask who conducts the signing.
3. Is the fee flat, and what does it include? Specifically: does it include the deed funding the trust?
4. Do you handle probate and estate litigation as well? An attorney who only drafts plans never finds out which ones fail.
5. What happens when I need a change in three years? Ask what an amendment costs and whether you will be dealing with the same person.

Those five questions are most of what to look for in an estate planning attorney, and they are the substance behind what questions to ask an estate planning attorney generally. If you want a lawyer who specializes in trusts and estate planning specifically, ask what share of the practice that work represents — a general practitioner who does the occasional will is a different proposition from a dedicated will attorney and trusts practice.

One note on vocabulary, since the titles are used loosely. An estate attorney, a trust and estate attorney and an estate planning lawyer usually mean the same thing: someone who drafts the documents before death. That is different from an estate administration attorney or probate lawyer, who handles the estate afterward. I do both, which is the point I make above about seeing which plans fail.

Helping a parent who needs a plan

A good number of my calls come from an adult child rather than the client. Talking to your parents about estate planning is genuinely difficult, and the conversation goes better when it is framed around the incapacity documents rather than around death — nobody wants to discuss their will, but most people will agree that somebody should be able to pay their bills if they end up in the hospital.

Practical notes. The client is your parent, not you, which means the plan reflects what they want and I need to speak with them directly. Adult children are welcome on the call if the parent wants them there. One question that comes up constantly in this situation is whether you can sign for them under a power of attorney you already hold — for a deed, the answer is narrower than most people expect, and I have written it out separately: can a power of attorney sign a lady bird deed in Florida. And remote meetings solve the common version of this problem, where the parent is in Florida and the children are not — everyone joins the same video call from three states.

Virtual Estate Planning for Clients Across Florida

Virtual estate planning is the right fit for some people and unnecessary for others. Working with a virtual estate planning attorney tends to make the most sense for:

• Snowbirds and part-year residents, who need a Florida plan and are not always in Florida to make one.
• Parents of young children, for whom the guardian nomination is the entire point and finding a weekday afternoon is the obstacle.
• Adult children helping a parent from another state, who need to be in the meeting.
• Anyone with a demanding schedule who has been meaning to do this for three years.
• Clients who prefer Spanish. I speak Spanish and conduct these meetings in Spanish where that is easier.

I represent clients throughout Florida — all 67 counties — with video consultations and remote signing, and in-person meetings available by appointment at my Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale offices. The estate planning Florida residents need is governed by Florida law and decided in Florida courts, which is the reason a Florida-licensed attorney matters more here than the distance between us does.

Getting Started

The first call is a conversation, not a pitch. Tell me what you own and who you are trying to protect, and I will tell you what you need, what it costs, and whether the remote route works for your situation. If a simpler and cheaper approach fits, I will say so.

Call (305) 224-6811 or send me a message.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is online estate planning legal in Florida?

Yes. Florida law permits estate planning documents to be prepared and executed remotely, including remote witnessing and online notarization, subject to specific requirements. Whether a particular document is valid depends on whether those requirements were met — which is why execution is the step that matters most.

Is online estate planning a good idea?

Working with an attorney remotely is a good idea for most people — it removes the scheduling obstacle that stops the majority from ever starting. Using an unassisted DIY platform is a different question, and the answer depends entirely on how simple your situation actually is. The trouble is that the platform cannot tell you.

Is online estate planning worth it?

If the alternative is doing nothing, yes, and that is the real comparison for most people. Roughly two-thirds of American adults have no will at all. A plan that exists and is imperfect beats a perfect plan you never got around to.

What is the best online estate planning service?

For a Florida resident with real property, a spouse, children, or anything unusual in the family, the honest answer is that the best service is a Florida attorney rather than a platform — because the platform is not evaluating your situation. For genuinely simple circumstances the national services are competent at what they do. Neither answer is a product recommendation.

What 5 documents must you have for estate planning?

A will (or a trust plus a pour-over will), a durable power of attorney, a health care surrogate designation, a living will, and a HIPAA authorization. The first governs what happens after death; the rest govern what happens if you are alive and unable to act.

What estate planning documents do I need?

Estate planning documents are the legal instruments that direct what happens to your property and who acts for you. If you are asking what are estate planning documents in the first place, the answer is the five above — and the documents needed for estate planning are the same five for most people. Whether a trust should replace the simple will is the main variable, and it turns on out-of-state property, family structure, privacy and whether you want to keep the estate out of court.

How much does estate planning cost in Florida?

$675 for a will on its own and $1,500 for the will plus the durable power of attorney, living will, health care surrogate designation and preneed guardian designation — both all-in, covering every cost associated with the service. A basic revocable living trust starts at $2,500 and rises with complexity. Every figure is a flat fee quoted before any work begins.

What is the average cost for estate planning in Florida?

Published Florida figures generally run from a few hundred dollars for a single simple will to several thousand for a trust-based plan. The wide range reflects how differently firms bill and how few publish anything. Ask for a flat fee in writing before work starts.

Are estate planning fees tax deductible?

For most individuals, no. Fees allocable to income-producing property or a business can be treated differently. Ask your CPA about your specific return.

How long does it take?

Those are drafting estimates, and the clock starts when I have the information I need rather than at the first call. Will-based plans are usually drafted within three to five business days of that point, trust-based plans within seven to fourteen. Your review, the signing, and anything that follows it — recording a deed, retitling accounts into a trust — are separate stages on their own timelines. Start to finish, most will-based plans run two to three weeks and trust-based plans three to five.

Do I ever have to come to your office?

Usually not. The consultation, the drafting and the review meeting are remote in every case, and most signings are as well. Some documents and some circumstances call for witnesses who are physically present, and I tell you which applies to you before anything is drafted rather than after it is signed. In-person meetings are available at Coral Gables or Fort Lauderdale if you prefer them.

Can I sign if I am outside Florida, or outside the country?

Often yes, but the route depends on where you physically are at the moment of signing. Tell me at the first call where you expect to be, and I will tell you which execution method applies. Do not assume — this is the detail that most often changes the plan.

What technology do I need?

A computer, tablet or phone with a working camera and microphone, a stable internet connection, an email address, and a valid government-issued photo ID for the signing.

What should I have ready before my first call?

Nothing, to book it. To arrive ready: a rough list of what you own and how each item is titled, who you want to receive it, who should act for you if you cannot, and any existing documents. The checklist above covers it in full.

Will I speak to the same attorney throughout?

Yes. This is a solo practice. I conduct the initial call, draft the documents, run the review meeting and handle the signing.

Can I get a power of attorney online in Florida?

Yes, and it is one of the more common single-document requests, often on short notice. Be careful with free blank forms — a power of attorney hands another person control of your money, and Florida requires specific language for certain powers.

What is a health care surrogate, and how is it different from a medical power of attorney?

They are largely the same instrument under different names. Florida calls it a designation of health care surrogate; other states call it a medical power of attorney or health care proxy. It is separate from your durable power of attorney, which covers financial matters rather than medical ones.

Do I need a living will as well as a health care surrogate?

Most plans include both. The surrogate designation names who decides; the living will states what you want in specific end-of-life circumstances, so your surrogate is following your instructions rather than guessing.

Can you set up a living trust online, or only a will?

Both. A Florida revocable living trust can be drafted, reviewed and executed remotely, and a trust-based plan also includes a pour-over will, powers of attorney and health care documents.

Do I need a trust, or is a will enough?

Many Florida families do not need a trust. One generally earns its cost with out-of-state real property, a blended family, a beneficiary who should not inherit outright, privacy concerns, or a firm preference to stay out of court.

Will my documents be self-proved?

Yes, that is the intent in every plan. A self-proving affidavit lets a will be admitted to probate without locating the witnesses years later. It is a separate instrument that must be executed properly, and it is one of the most common omissions in DIY plans.

Do online wills hold up in court?

A properly executed one does. What gets challenged is almost never the fact that a document was prepared online — it is a defective signing, an unclear provision, or a capacity question. Execution is what determines whether it holds.

Can I write my own will without a lawyer in Florida?

Yes, nothing prohibits it, and Florida recognizes a will you wrote yourself provided it was executed correctly. The risk is not the writing but the execution and the provisions you did not know to include. Note that Florida does not recognize handwritten wills that lack the required witnesses.

I already have documents from LegalZoom or Trust & Will. Can you review them?

Yes, and it is worth doing. The three things I look at first: whether the will was executed and self-proved correctly, whether the homestead devise works under Florida law, and — if there is a trust — whether anything was ever retitled into it. Reviewing existing documents is quoted separately and is usually less than a new plan.

What is a LegalZoom alternative that still gives me a real attorney?

An attorney-drafted plan delivered remotely, which is what this page describes. You get the convenience that made the online option attractive, with a Florida-licensed attorney responsible for the documents.

I just moved to Florida. Do I need a new estate plan?

You need a review, and frequently a new plan. Florida homestead rules, execution requirements and terminology differ from most states, and the homestead point in particular can defeat a devise that was unremarkable where you came from.

Does my out-of-state will still work in Florida?

Often it remains valid, which is not the same as accomplishing what you intended. Have it reviewed rather than assumed.

My parents live in Florida and I don’t. Can you work with us both?

Yes, and it is a common arrangement. Your parent is the client, so the plan reflects what they want and I speak with them directly, but family members are welcome on the call. Remote meetings solve this particular problem well.

What does an estate planning attorney do?

Determines what your situation actually requires, drafts documents that fit it, ensures they are executed so they hold up, and remains responsible for the result. The drafting is the visible part and the smallest part.

Do you need a lawyer for estate planning?

Not legally. Whether you should depends on whether anything about your situation is non-obvious — real property, a blended family, a beneficiary with special circumstances, assets in more than one state, or a business.

Does a will avoid probate?

No. A will is the instruction sheet the probate court follows — it directs how the estate is distributed, it does not keep anything out of the estate. This is the most expensive misunderstanding in estate planning.

Does a trust avoid probate?

For the assets actually retitled into it, yes. For anything left outside it, no. That is why funding is the part that matters, and why an unfunded trust delivers the outcome it was bought to prevent.

How do I avoid probate in Florida?

Through titling rather than through documents: assets that pass by survivorship, by beneficiary designation, by a funded trust, or by a lady bird deed on the residence never enter a probate estate. My page on when probate is not necessary in Florida works through which assets already pass outside probate and which do not.

What is a successor trustee, and how is it different from an executor?

The successor trustee takes over your trust when you die or can no longer serve; the executor — called the personal representative in Florida — settles your probate estate under your will. Similar work, different documents, and often the same person does both.

How do I update a will without a lawyer?

People do search for how to update a will without a lawyer, and my answer is: carefully, and generally I would not. Handwritten changes on the face of a signed will can invalidate it in Florida rather than amend it, and a codicil has to be executed with the same formalities as the original. If the change is small, having it done properly is inexpensive. If it is large, a new will is usually cleaner than patching the old one.

Can I include digital assets in my Florida estate plan?

Yes, and it is worth doing deliberately. Estate planning for digital assets covers online accounts, photo libraries, domain names, loyalty balances and cryptocurrency — and unlike a bank account, most of these are governed by the platform’s terms of service and by a specific Florida statute rather than by your will alone. Cryptocurrency is the hardest case: without the keys, nobody can reach it, no matter what your documents say.

What happens if I do nothing?

Florida’s intestacy statutes decide who inherits, which may not match your wishes and frequently surprises unmarried partners and blended families. If you become incapacitated without documents, your family may need a court-supervised guardianship to make decisions a power of attorney would have handled privately.

What happens if you die without a will in Florida?

Florida intestate succession takes over. The statutes set a fixed order — spouse first, then descendants, then parents, then siblings, and outward from there — and that order applies regardless of what you would have wanted or what you told people. There is no chart you can adjust and no discretion for the judge.

Two consequences catch people. An unmarried partner inherits nothing, no matter how long the relationship lasted — Florida has not recognized common-law marriage contracted after 1968, and a domestic partner has no intestate rights at all.

And the blended-family split is set by statute rather than by agreement. Under § 732.102, a surviving spouse takes the entire intestate estate only if there are no descendants, or if every descendant is the couple’s own and the spouse has no children from elsewhere. If either spouse has a child from a prior relationship, the surviving spouse takes one-half and the descendants take the rest. That is where a large share of the contested cases I handle begin.

What is the difference between testate and intestate?

Testate means you died with a valid will; intestate means you did not. The testate vs intestate distinction decides whether your instructions control or the statute does. It is worth knowing that a will which fails its execution requirements produces the same result as no will at all — which is why the signing step matters as much as the drafting.

When should I start estate planning?

There is no age at which this begins, so when to start estate planning is really a question about events rather than birthdays. The usual triggers are a first child, a first home, a marriage or divorce, or a diagnosis. If you have any of those and no documents, you are already past the point.

I got married after signing my will. Does that change anything?

Yes, and this one surprises people. Under Fla. Stat. § 732.301, a spouse you marry after executing your will — and who survives you — is generally entitled to an intestate share regardless of what the will says, unless the will provided for the marriage or a valid prenuptial agreement waives it. A plan drafted before a marriage and never revisited can be substantially rewritten by the statute.

How often should I update my plan?

Review it after any marriage, divorce, birth, death, significant asset change, or move to another state. Absent those, every three to five years is a reasonable rhythm.

Do you serve my county?

Yes. I represent clients in all 67 Florida counties. Remote consultation and signing means location is not a constraint.

How do I get started?

Call (305) 224-6811 or send a message. The first call takes about thirty minutes and ends with a specific recommendation and a flat-fee quote.

This page is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Whether a particular estate planning approach is appropriate depends on facts specific to your situation.

Reviewed by Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Esq., Florida Bar No. 107002. Last reviewed September 2026.