Most people think estate planning is a task for the very wealthy, something to worry about only if you have millions to pass down or a complicated business to untangle. That belief is one of the most expensive misunderstandings in all of retirement planning. Estate planning is not really about taxes for most families. It is about control. It decides who makes decisions for you if you cannot, who raises or protects the people you love, who receives what you have worked a lifetime to build, and whether your family inherits a clear plan or a painful, public, expensive mess.
Florida makes this both easier and harder than most states. Easier, because there is no state estate tax and no inheritance tax, and because Florida offers powerful tools that many other states do not. Harder, because Florida has some genuinely unusual rules, especially around your home, that trip up families who assume a simple will handles everything. It does not. A homestead left the wrong way, a beneficiary form never updated, a trust that was never funded, any one of these can quietly override your wishes no matter what your will says.
This guide walks you through the whole picture: the documents every Florida estate plan needs, how Florida probate works and how to avoid it, the special rules that govern your homestead, the rights your surviving spouse has whether you plan for them or not, how estate taxes actually apply, and the mistakes that cause the most heartache. Read it as an education, not as legal advice. Estate planning documents are legal instruments, and they should be prepared or reviewed by a licensed Florida estate planning attorney who knows your situation. What we do at Roger Fishel Financial is help pre-retirees and retirees across Winter Park, Lake Mary, Lake Nona, Oviedo, Clermont, Winter Garden, and Kissimmee coordinate the financial side of their legacy so that when they sit down with an attorney, the plan fits together. Let us begin.
What Estate Planning Really Means, and Why Every Florida Retiree Needs It
Strip away the jargon and estate planning answers a handful of deeply human questions. If you become unable to manage your own affairs, who steps in, and by what authority? If you cannot speak for yourself in a medical crisis, who decides, and do they know what you would want? When you pass, who receives your home, your accounts, and your belongings, and how quickly and privately can they actually get them? And how do you keep the people you love from fighting, guessing, or handing a chunk of your legacy to the court system and the lawyers?
Notice that only one of those questions is about death, and none of them is about being rich. A 70-year-old widow with a paid-off home and a modest portfolio needs an estate plan every bit as much as a multimillionaire, arguably more, because she has less margin for a costly mistake. The size of your estate changes the sophistication of the tools, not the need for a plan. Everyone who owns a home, holds retirement accounts, or cares who makes decisions for them needs the core pieces in place.
There is also a cost to doing nothing, and it is not hypothetical. Without a plan, Florida law writes your will for you through its intestacy statute, distributing your assets by a fixed formula that may bear no resemblance to your wishes. Your family may spend months and thousands of dollars in probate. Decisions about your care may fall to a court-appointed guardian rather than the person you would have chosen. The whole point of planning is to replace that default chaos with your own clear instructions.
The Core Documents Every Florida Estate Plan Should Include
A complete plan is not a single document. It is a small set of coordinated instruments, each doing a specific job. Here are the essential ones, and what each is for. Florida has specific execution requirements for these, so each should be drafted or reviewed by a Florida attorney rather than pulled from a generic online form.
Last Will and Testament
Your will names who receives your probate assets, names a personal representative to carry out your wishes, and, critically for parents of minor children, names a guardian. In Florida, a valid will must be signed by you and witnessed by two people, and adding a self-proving affidavit, which is notarized, lets the will be admitted to probate more easily without tracking down witnesses years later. One point surprises many people: a will does not avoid probate. It is your instruction manual for the probate process, not a way around it. We will come back to that, because it is one of the most common misunderstandings in estate planning.
Revocable Living Trust
A revocable living trust is the workhorse of most complete Florida plans. You create it during your life, move assets into it, and keep full control, you can change or revoke it anytime. Its power is what happens next: assets properly titled in the trust pass to your beneficiaries without probate, privately and usually far faster, and the trust provides seamless management if you become incapacitated. A trust can also be drafted to hold your Florida homestead while preserving your homestead tax benefits, though this requires careful, Florida-specific drafting. A trust only works for the assets you actually put into it, which is where many plans fail, as we will see.
Durable Power of Attorney
A durable power of attorney lets someone you trust manage your financial affairs if you cannot, paying bills, managing accounts, handling property. The word durable means it survives your incapacity, which is the entire point. Florida has particular requirements for a valid power of attorney, including specific statutory formatting and execution with two witnesses and a notary, and Florida law does not recognize the springing powers that some other states allow, so the document has to be structured correctly from the start. Without this document, your family may have to go to court to be appointed guardian just to manage your money, a slow and expensive process you can easily avoid.
Designation of Health Care Surrogate
This names the person who can make medical decisions for you if you are unable to make them yourself, and lets them access your medical information. Choosing the right person matters more than people realize. It should be someone who can stay calm under pressure, honor your wishes even if they differ from their own, and advocate firmly with medical staff. Talk to that person in advance so they are not guessing in a crisis.
Living Will
A living will records your wishes about end-of-life care, such as whether you want life-prolonging procedures if you are terminally ill or in an irreversible condition. It spares your family the anguish of guessing what you would have wanted at the hardest possible moment, and it spares them the conflict that can erupt when loved ones disagree. Paired with the health care surrogate designation, it makes sure both the who and the what of your medical wishes are covered.
Together these documents form the foundation. Florida also recognizes electronic wills and remote witnessing under its statutes, but the execution rules are precise, and a small error can invalidate a document exactly when it matters most. This is the clearest example of why do-it-yourself estate planning is risky in Florida, and why the modest cost of proper drafting is worth it.
Florida Probate: What It Is and Why People Work to Avoid It
Probate is the court-supervised process of settling a person’s estate: validating the will, paying debts and taxes, and distributing what remains to the heirs. It is not inherently a disaster, but it has real drawbacks that make avoiding it a common goal. Probate takes time, often many months and sometimes well over a year for a contested or complex estate. It costs money, in court fees, attorney fees, and personal representative fees. And it is public, anyone can look up who received what.
Florida has more than one path through probate. Formal administration is the full process, used for larger or more complicated estates. Summary administration is a faster, simpler route for smaller estates. A recent change matters here: for deaths on or after July 1, 2026, the value ceiling for summary administration rose, so estates with non-exempt assets at or below 150,000 dollars can use the streamlined path, up from the prior 75,000 dollar limit, and estates where the person has been deceased for more than two years may also qualify. That change lets more Florida families use the simpler process, but the cleaner goal for most people is to keep assets out of probate in the first place.
One trap catches snowbirds and part-year residents in particular. If you own real estate in another state at your death, that property may require a separate probate proceeding in that state, called ancillary probate, on top of any Florida process. Owning out-of-state property through a trust is one common way to avoid that second, parallel headache. Coordinating this well is also part of establishing Florida domicile, which affects far more than income tax.
Ways to Avoid or Minimize Probate in Florida
The good news is that a great deal of your estate can pass outside probate entirely, quickly and privately, if you set it up on purpose. Here are the main tools, along with the cautions that come with each.
- Revocable living trust. Assets titled in the trust pass to your beneficiaries without probate. The catch is funding: a trust only controls what you actually transfer into it. A trust that is signed but never funded is one of the most common and costly failures in estate planning.
- Beneficiary designations. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and annuities pass directly to the people you name, outside your will and outside probate. Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death designations can do the same for bank and brokerage accounts. These are powerful precisely because they override your will, which is also why keeping them current is essential.
- Joint ownership with survivorship. Property held jointly with rights of survivorship, including tenancy by the entireties between spouses, passes automatically to the survivor. It is simple, but it is a blunt instrument that can create unintended results, especially in blended families or when adding a child to a title.
- Lady Bird deed. Also called an enhanced life estate deed, this is a Florida favorite. It lets you keep full control of your home during your life, including the right to sell or mortgage it or revoke the deed, and passes it automatically to your chosen beneficiaries at death without probate, while preserving your homestead tax benefits. It must be drafted precisely and, importantly, it cannot override Florida’s homestead rules if a spouse or minor child survives you.
- Summary administration. For smaller estates that do qualify, this streamlined court process is far faster and cheaper than full probate.
Each of these tools is useful, and each can backfire if used carelessly or in isolation. The right combination depends on your family, your assets, and your goals, which is why coordination with a Florida attorney matters more than picking a single favorite trick off a list.
Florida Homestead: Your Biggest Asset and Its Very Special Rules
Nothing in Florida estate planning surprises people more than the rules around the homestead, your primary residence. Florida treats the home as almost sacred, and that protection cuts in two directions. On one hand, the homestead enjoys extraordinary protection from creditors, in most cases unlimited, which is one reason Florida is a favored state for retirees worried about liability. On the other hand, Florida sharply restricts how you can leave your home when you die, and those restrictions can override your will entirely.
Here is the core rule. If you are survived by a spouse or a minor child, you generally cannot freely devise your homestead to whomever you wish. A will or even a deed that tries to do so can be void as to the home. If you are survived by a spouse and have no minor children, the law does not simply hand the house to whomever your will names. Instead, your spouse is entitled to a life estate in the home with the remainder passing to your descendants, or your spouse may elect to take a one-half interest as a tenant in common with your descendants instead. If you are survived by a minor child, the homestead cannot be devised away at all. A married owner can leave the homestead outright to the spouse alone if there is no minor child, but beyond that, the constitution and statutes constrain the choice.
This is not a technicality. It routinely defeats the intentions of people in second marriages who assume they can leave the house to their own children, or who want to leave it to one child rather than split it. It is exactly the kind of thing that a Lady Bird deed or a carefully drafted trust can plan around, but only when a spouse’s rights are properly handled, sometimes through the spouse’s written joinder or waiver. Because a homestead mistake can void the very transfer you intended and drag the home into probate or litigation, this is the single most important reason to have your plan reviewed by a Florida attorney rather than assembled from a generic template. The home is usually the largest asset a retiree owns, and Florida guards it with rules found almost nowhere else.
Your Surviving Spouse’s Rights in Florida
Florida gives a surviving spouse significant protections that apply whether or not your documents account for them, and understanding these is essential, especially for blended families. The centerpiece is the elective share. A surviving spouse in Florida can choose to claim 30 percent of the elective estate rather than accept whatever the will or plan leaves them. Crucially, the elective estate reaches far beyond probate assets. It can include your homestead, payable-on-death and joint accounts, revocable trust property, certain retirement interests, and even life insurance cash value. In other words, a spouse cannot easily be disinherited by routing assets around the will, because the elective share reaches into those non-probate assets too.
There are timing rules, the election is generally due the earlier of six months after being served the notice of administration or two years after death, and there are other protections layered on top, including homestead rights, a family allowance, and certain exempt property that passes to the spouse or children outside the general estate. Florida also protects against accidental omissions through pretermitted spouse and pretermitted child rules, which can grant a share to a spouse married after the will was signed, or to a child born after the will was signed, if the documents did not address them.
For most married couples in a first marriage leaving everything to each other, these rules cause no friction. For blended families, second marriages, and anyone who wants to divide assets in a way that does not simply favor the current spouse, they are pivotal. Planning that ignores the elective share and homestead rights can collapse the moment it is tested. This is also where the financial and tax picture intertwines with the legal one, because how a surviving spouse is provided for affects their future taxes as well, a subject we cover in our discussion of the widow’s tax trap.
Blended Families, Second Marriages, and Special Situations
Central Florida is full of couples in second marriages, each bringing children from a prior relationship, and this is where estate planning gets genuinely delicate. The common goal, providing for a current spouse during their life while ultimately preserving assets for your own children, collides directly with Florida’s homestead rules and elective share. Left unplanned, the likely result is not what most people intend: the surviving spouse may end up with far more control than expected, and the children of the first marriage may be left out or forced into conflict.
Several tools exist to thread this needle. A properly structured trust, sometimes a marital trust that provides for the spouse for life and then directs the remainder to your children, can balance both goals. Prenuptial or postnuptial agreements can waive certain spousal rights by mutual consent. Careful titling and beneficiary planning can direct specific assets to specific people. None of these is do-it-yourself territory, because the interaction of homestead, the elective share, and beneficiary rules is exactly where generic plans fail. If your family situation is anything other than a straightforward first marriage, this is the section to take to an attorney first.
Estate Taxes: What Florida Retirees Actually Face
Here the news is mostly good. Florida has no state estate tax, having repealed it for deaths after 2004, and no inheritance tax. So at the state level, your heirs face nothing. The only estate tax to consider is the federal one, and for 2026 the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption is 15 million dollars per person, or 30 million dollars for a married couple. That amount was made permanent by the 2025 federal tax law and is indexed for inflation going forward, and assets above it are taxed at a top federal rate of 40 percent. The practical takeaway is that the overwhelming majority of Florida families will owe no federal estate tax at all.
Two related points still matter even for families well below the exemption. First, portability. When one spouse dies, the survivor can, with a proper and timely election, claim the deceased spouse’s unused exemption, which can shelter a great deal for the surviving spouse’s estate later. Second, and more relevant for most retirees, is the step-up in basis. When you pass, many assets receive a new cost basis equal to their value at your death, which can wipe out the built-in capital gains your heirs would otherwise owe if they sell. This makes the timing and titling of appreciated assets an important planning question that has nothing to do with the estate tax and everything to do with your heirs’ income taxes.
One more federal rule reaches into nearly every estate: inherited retirement accounts. Under current law, most non-spouse beneficiaries who inherit a traditional IRA or 401(k) must empty the account within ten years, which can pile taxable income onto an heir during their peak earning years. Coordinating how retirement money passes, and considering strategies like a Roth conversion strategy during your lifetime, can meaningfully reduce the tax your heirs inherit along with the money. This is a place where the legal plan and the financial plan must be built together, not separately.
Beneficiary Designations: The Plan That Quietly Overrides Your Will
If you remember one thing from this guide, make it this. The beneficiary designations on your retirement accounts, life insurance, and annuities control who gets that money, and they override your will completely. You can have a beautifully drafted will leaving everything to your children, but if your old 401(k) still names an ex-spouse as beneficiary, your ex-spouse gets it. This happens more often than you would believe, and it is heartbreaking and entirely avoidable.
Review every beneficiary designation you have, and name contingent beneficiaries as well as primary ones, so the money has a clear path if your first choice has passed. Be careful naming minor children directly, since a minor cannot legally receive a large sum, and doing so can force a court process or hand a young adult a large check with no guardrails; a trust or a properly structured arrangement is usually better. And revisit these forms after every major life event: marriage, divorce, a death, a birth. Beneficiary designations are the fastest-moving, most-overlooked part of an estate plan, and keeping them aligned with your overall wishes is one of the highest-value hours you can spend.
Planning for Incapacity, Not Just Death
Estate planning is often framed entirely around death, but some of its most important work happens while you are still alive. Advances in medicine mean many people now experience a period of diminished capacity before they pass, and the documents that govern that period, the durable power of attorney, the health care surrogate designation, and the living will, may be used long before your will ever is.
Consider what happens without them. If you become unable to manage your finances and have no valid durable power of attorney, your family generally cannot simply step in. They may have to petition a court to be appointed your guardian, a process that is public, expensive, slow, and stressful, and that puts a judge, rather than you, in charge of who controls your affairs. The same is true on the medical side without a health care surrogate. Planning for incapacity is not a grim afterthought. For many families it is the part of the plan that gets used most, and the part whose absence causes the most immediate hardship.
Choosing the Right People to Put in Charge
Every document in your plan hands authority to a person: a personal representative to settle your estate, a successor trustee to manage your trust, an agent under your power of attorney, a health care surrogate, and, for parents of minors, a guardian. The documents are only as good as the people named in them. A poorly chosen fiduciary can be disorganized, overwhelmed, conflicted, or worse, and the fallout lands on the family you were trying to protect. Choose people who are trustworthy, organized, willing to take on the responsibility, and able to stay level-headed under stress. Name a backup for every role, in case your first choice cannot serve. And talk with each of them in advance, so no one is blindsided by a job they did not know they had agreed to do.
Florida adds a rule here that surprises many newcomers. Your personal representative must either be a Florida resident, or, if they live out of state, be closely related to you, such as a spouse, or a relative by blood or adoption within the range Florida law allows. That means you cannot name a longtime friend or a trusted colleague from your former state to serve as your personal representative in Florida if they are not a relative. People who move here often assume the friend they would have chosen up north can still do the job, and they are wrong. It is a small detail with large consequences, and it is one more reason to have a Florida attorney confirm that the people you have chosen can actually serve. For complex estates, family conflict, or situations where no suitable individual is available, a professional or corporate fiduciary is worth considering.
Trusts Beyond the Basics
Most retirees are well served by a revocable living trust, but it helps to understand the wider family of trusts so you know what your attorney may suggest for particular goals. The key distinction is between revocable and irrevocable. A revocable trust, as described earlier, keeps you in full control and can be changed anytime; it is about probate avoidance and incapacity management, not asset protection or tax reduction. An irrevocable trust gives up some control in exchange for benefits a revocable trust cannot provide, such as stronger creditor protection or removing assets from your taxable estate.
A few specialized trusts come up often. A special needs trust lets you provide for a disabled loved one without disqualifying them from means-tested government benefits, and it is essential planning for families in that situation. An irrevocable life insurance trust can keep life insurance proceeds out of your taxable estate, relevant mainly for larger estates. A testamentary trust, created through your will, can hold and manage assets for minor children or young adults until they reach an age you choose, rather than handing a teenager a lump sum. The right structure depends entirely on your goals, and the wrong one can create cost and rigidity you do not need, which is why trusts are a conversation to have with a qualified attorney rather than a product to buy off a shelf.
Digital Assets and the Modern Estate
A generation ago, an estate was houses, accounts, and boxes of paper. Today much of your life lives online, and a plan that ignores it leaves your family locked out. Think about email accounts, online banking and investment logins, photos stored in the cloud, social media, subscriptions, frequent-flyer miles, and for some people cryptocurrency, which can be lost forever if no one can access the keys.
Florida has adopted a version of the law that lets you grant a trusted person legal authority over your digital accounts, but it works best when your documents specifically address digital assets and when you leave a secure, current inventory of what exists and how to reach it. That inventory should never sit in your will, which becomes a public document in probate. Instead, keep a separate, secure record and make sure your personal representative or trustee knows how to find it. It is a small step that spares your family enormous frustration.
Coordinating Your Estate Plan With the Rest of Your Retirement
An estate plan does not stand alone. It touches, and is touched by, nearly every other part of your financial life, and the biggest failures happen in the gaps between professionals who never talk to each other. The way you title assets affects both probate and your income taxes. The order in which you draw down accounts during retirement affects what is left to inherit and in what form. Long-term care costs can consume an estate before it ever passes, which is why estate planning and long-term care planning in Central Florida belong in the same conversation, particularly given Florida’s Medicaid estate recovery rules and the way tools like a Lady Bird deed can protect the home. And Florida’s overall why Florida is tax-friendly for retirees shapes how much of your legacy survives at all.
This coordination is precisely why so many well-meaning plans still fail. The attorney drafts excellent documents, but no one funds the trust. The financial advisor builds a great portfolio, but the beneficiary forms contradict the will. The tax preparer files clean returns, but no one plans the inherited-account tax bomb. When these professionals operate in silos, the plan has seams, and seams are where money and intentions leak out. Making sure the legal, financial, and tax pieces actually fit together is the heart of what we mean by why you need a financial quarterback, someone whose job is to see the whole field and keep every player moving toward the same goal.
Common Estate Planning Mistakes Florida Retirees Make
After years of helping families coordinate this work, the same avoidable mistakes appear again and again. Recognizing them is half the battle.
- Having no plan at all, and letting Florida’s intestacy statute and a court decide who gets what and who makes decisions.
- Assuming a will avoids probate. It does not. A will is your instruction manual for probate, not a way around it.
- Creating a trust and never funding it. An unfunded trust is an empty box, and the assets left outside it still go through probate.
- Letting beneficiary designations go stale, so an ex-spouse or a deceased relative is still named on a major account.
- Mishandling the homestead, by trying to leave the home in a way Florida’s rules forbid, which can void the transfer and trigger litigation.
- Ignoring incapacity, and leaving no valid durable power of attorney or health care surrogate, which can force the family into guardianship court.
- Naming minor children directly as beneficiaries, with no trust or structure to manage the money responsibly.
- Never updating the plan after a marriage, divorce, death, birth, move to Florida, or major change in the law.
- Building the plan in silos, so the legal documents, the financial accounts, and the tax strategy quietly contradict one another.
When and How to Get Started, and How Often to Review
The best time to put an estate plan in place is before you think you need it, because the events that make it urgent, a sudden illness, an accident, a death, arrive without warning. If you have no plan, start with the core documents: a will, a durable power of attorney, a health care surrogate designation, and a living will, and consider whether a revocable trust fits your situation. If you already have a plan, the question is whether it still reflects your life and current Florida law.
Plans go stale. Review yours after any major life event, a marriage or divorce, the birth of a child or grandchild, the death of a spouse or a named beneficiary or personal representative, a significant change in your assets, a move to Florida from another state, or a meaningful change in the tax law like the permanent higher federal exemption. Even absent a specific event, a review every few years is wise. Documents drafted in another state before you moved to Florida deserve particular attention, because Florida’s homestead and execution rules differ enough that an out-of-state plan may not do what you think it does here. When you are ready to draft or update documents, work with a licensed Florida estate planning attorney, and bring your financial and tax picture to the table so the whole plan is built as one.
A Central Florida Example
Consider a hypothetical couple in their late sixties in Oviedo, both in second marriages, each with adult children from before. They own their home, hold retirement accounts and some taxable investments, and want the same thing most blended families want: to make sure the surviving spouse is secure, and that whatever remains eventually reaches each of their own children rather than defaulting entirely to the survivor’s side of the family.
Left to Florida’s default rules, that goal would likely fail. The homestead rules and the elective share would give the surviving spouse rights that could redirect the house and a large share of the estate away from the first spouse’s children. So their plan, built with a Florida attorney and coordinated with their financial and tax picture, uses a trust structure that provides for the surviving spouse during their life while directing the remainder to the intended children, addresses the homestead deliberately rather than leaving it to chance, updates every beneficiary designation to match the plan, and puts durable powers of attorney and health care documents in place for both of them. They also coordinate the tax side, mindful of the inherited-account rules and the step-up in basis, so the children inherit as efficiently as possible. The specifics are illustrative and every family is different, but the lesson is universal: in Florida, a blended family that plans deliberately gets the outcome it wants, and one that assumes the default rules will cooperate usually does not.
Bringing It All Together
Estate and legacy planning is not about preparing for death so much as it is about staying in control, of your care, your home, your money, and your family’s peace. Florida rewards those who plan and punishes those who assume. The state’s lack of an estate or inheritance tax is a genuine gift, but its homestead rules, its elective share, and the quiet power of beneficiary designations mean that a casual, do-it-yourself approach often produces exactly the outcome you were trying to prevent.
Get the core documents in place. Understand how your home must pass. Keep your beneficiary forms current. Plan for incapacity, not just death. And coordinate the legal, financial, and tax pieces so they reinforce rather than contradict one another. Do those things, ideally with a licensed Florida estate planning attorney drafting the documents and a coordinated financial plan around them, and you will have done one of the most loving and responsible things possible: left your family a clear path instead of a painful puzzle.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a will or a trust in Florida?
Most complete Florida plans use both. A will names guardians and directs assets that are not otherwise handled, while a revocable living trust can pass assets outside probate and manage them if you become incapacitated. Which combination is right depends on your assets and family, so it is worth reviewing with a Florida estate planning attorney.
Does a will avoid probate in Florida?
No. This is one of the most common misconceptions. A will is your instruction manual for the probate process, not a way to skip it. To keep assets out of probate, people use tools like revocable trusts, beneficiary designations, joint ownership with survivorship, and Lady Bird deeds.
Does Florida have an estate tax or inheritance tax?
No. Florida repealed its estate tax for deaths after 2004 and has no inheritance tax, so your heirs owe Florida nothing. Only the federal estate tax may apply, and for 2026 the federal exemption is 15 million dollars per person, or 30 million dollars per married couple, so the large majority of families owe no estate tax at all.
What happens if I die without a will in Florida?
Florida’s intestacy statute decides who inherits, using a fixed formula based on your surviving relatives, and the court appoints someone to administer the estate. The result may not match your wishes, and the homestead passes under intestacy rules as well. A will lets you control these outcomes instead of leaving them to a statute.
Why is the Florida homestead so important in estate planning?
The homestead enjoys strong creditor protection, but Florida also restricts how you can leave it. If you are survived by a spouse or a minor child, you generally cannot freely devise the home, and a will or deed that tries to can be void. This trips up many families, especially in second marriages, so the homestead should always be handled with a Florida attorney.
Can my spouse override my will in Florida?
In part, yes. A surviving spouse can elect to take 30 percent of the elective estate, which reaches beyond probate assets into the homestead, joint and payable-on-death accounts, revocable trust property, certain retirement interests, and life insurance cash value. This makes it very hard to disinherit a spouse by routing assets around the will, and it is a central issue in blended-family planning.
Do my retirement accounts and life insurance pass through my will?
No. Those pass by beneficiary designation, which overrides your will entirely. That is why keeping beneficiary forms current, and naming contingent beneficiaries, is essential. An outdated form naming an ex-spouse is one of the most common and painful estate planning mistakes.
What is a Lady Bird deed?
A Lady Bird deed, or enhanced life estate deed, lets you keep full control of your Florida home during your life, including the right to sell, mortgage, or revoke it, and passes it to your chosen beneficiaries at death without probate while preserving your homestead tax benefits. It must be drafted precisely and cannot override the homestead rules that protect a surviving spouse or minor child, so it should be prepared by a Florida attorney.
How often should I update my estate plan?
Review it after any major life event, a marriage, divorce, birth, death, significant change in assets, a move to Florida, or a major change in the law, and otherwise every few years. Plans drafted in another state before moving to Florida deserve special attention, because Florida’s rules differ enough that an out-of-state plan may not work as intended here.
Can I just write my own will using an online form?
It is risky in Florida. Florida has specific execution requirements, and its homestead and spousal rules can void or distort a generic plan in ways that are expensive to fix after the fact. A do-it-yourself document that seems fine can fail exactly when it is needed. The modest cost of having a Florida attorney prepare or review your documents is small compared with the cost of a defective plan.
Disclaimer: This article is provided by Roger Fishel Financial for general educational and informational purposes only. It is not legal, tax, investment, or accounting advice, and it should not be relied on as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who knows your specific situation.
Roger Fishel Financial and its representatives are not attorneys and do not practice law, provide legal advice, or draft legal documents. Estate planning documents, including wills, trusts, deeds, powers of attorney, and health care directives, are legal instruments that should be prepared or reviewed by a licensed Florida estate planning attorney. Only a licensed attorney can advise you on how the law applies to your circumstances.
Estate planning laws, tax exemptions, probate thresholds, and other figures referenced here are current only as of the date of publication and are subject to change. Florida law and federal law both change over time, and this article may not reflect the most recent updates. Rules involving the Florida homestead, the elective share, probate, and estate taxes are complex and fact-specific, and small differences in your situation can change the outcome.
Any free will or other document offered through Roger Fishel Financial is a starting point to help you take the first step and is not a substitute for personalized legal advice. For anything beyond a simple situation, and especially for blended families, second marriages, homestead concerns, business interests, or larger estates, consult a licensed Florida estate planning attorney.
Roger Fishel is licensed in the states in which he conducts business, and this material is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any product or service in any state where he is not appropriately licensed. Insurance and annuity product guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Links to third-party websites are provided for convenience only, and Roger Fishel Financial is not responsible for their content.
