Estate Planning Attorney for Crystal River, Florida

A Florida trust that leaves your home or savings to someone at your death has to be signed the way a will is signed, with two witnesses who watch you sign and a notary. Florida law voids the parts of a trust that pass property at death when they are signed without those formalities, and Florida courts have thrown out trust amendments that carried one witness instead of two. We run the signing with our own witnesses and notary, by video or in person. If you would rather sign locally, these are the places nearby.

A Florida deed needs two witnesses and a notary. We set up the signing for you by video, so you can sign from home without a trip across town. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store #6065 at 6752 West Gulf to Lake Highway lists notary service seven days a week. Call ahead to confirm a notary is in.

The Citrus Clerk rejects any deed that is missing a witness’s post office address. Since January 1, 2024, Florida has required each witness’s address to be printed, typed or stamped under the signature, and the Clerk says an email address does not count. The Clerk also asks that the price or consideration be disclosed so it can calculate the documentary stamp tax, and recommends a cover letter. Your deed is drafted with all of it.

Putting your home into the trust means recording a new deed, from you to yourself as trustee, in Citrus County’s official records. The trust deed is recorded at the same office, and in the same way, as any other deed.

Citrus County’s courthouse is in Inverness, but you do not have to drive there to record a deed. The Official Records department of Traci Perry, the Citrus County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, records documents at two customer service counters, the courthouse at 110 North Apopka Avenue in Inverness and the West Citrus Government Center at 1540 North Meadowcrest Boulevard in Crystal River. The Crystal River office is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., excluding holidays, and Official Records answers at 352-341-6424, option 2 and then option 1. Mailed deeds go to the courthouse in Inverness, attention Official Records, with a self-addressed stamped envelope for the original’s return.

You will not need to make either trip. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Citrus Clerk’s own list of e-recording vendors, so the original never leaves our hands. The Clerk’s new public e-recording portal, opened June 29, 2026, does not take any document that transfers property, so a deed still goes through a vendor like ours or across the counter.

A home held in your revocable trust keeps its homestead exemption when the trust gives you a lifetime interest in the home, which is how we draft it. The Property Appraiser still asks for proof of the trust, and each county asks for something slightly different, so here is what this one wants.

Homestead is handled by Cregg E. Dalton, the Citrus County Property Appraiser, and his office keeps a full-service Crystal River office in the West Citrus Government Center, 1540 North Meadowcrest Boulevard, Suite 400, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at (352) 341-6600. The main office is in the Court House Annex at 210 North Apopka Avenue, Suite 200, in Inverness, open 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and general email goes to [email protected]. You can also file online.

The deadline is March 1 of the year you apply for, and a homeowner who moved in after January 1 is encouraged to pre-file for the next year. If you moved from another Florida homestead, file Form DR-501T by March 1 to carry your Save Our Homes difference to the new house. A surviving spouse can claim Citrus County’s $5,000 widow’s or widower’s exemption with a copy of the spouse’s death certificate.

After your death your successor trustee steps in without a court. Within 60 days the trustee must tell the beneficiaries the trust exists, and Florida law requires a notice of trust to be filed with the court in Citrus County. To sell or transfer the house, the trustee signs a deed as trustee and gives the title company a certification of trust instead of the whole trust.

After you die, the house is already your family’s. To show that in the record, they record a certified copy of your death certificate and an affidavit, and then a title company can insure a sale. The Department of Health in Citrus County issues certified death certificates at its Lecanto office, 3700 West Sovereign Path, open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 352-527-0068. Each certificate costs $13. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on, asks for a copy of a valid photo ID, and releases the cause of death only to family or a legal representative. We prepare and record the rest.

We send you the recorded deed as soon as the Clerk returns it, and it appears in the Clerk’s official records search, whose index runs from 1980 to the present with images in PDF. The copies you print from that site are not certified.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk sells electronically certified copies through Clerk E-Certify, and the Tax Collector and passport services accept them. The Social Security office does not, so a certified copy for a name change or benefits must be picked up at the Clerk’s Official Records counter, and the West Citrus Government Center in Crystal River is one of the two places that sells it. For a plain paper copy, The UPS Store #6065 at 6752 West Gulf to Lake Highway, in the Publix shopping center at the corner of State Road 44 and County Road 486, lists printing and is locally owned, at (352) 795-0033.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Recording Activity Notification, an early warning when a document such as a deed or lien is recorded against your property in Citrus County. The Clerk explains that it must record any properly prepared document, even a fraudulent one, and cannot remove it without a court order, so an early warning is what gives an owner time to act.

The West Citrus Government Center is worth knowing, because three offices you may need sit in the same building on Meadowcrest Boulevard. The Clerk records deeds and sells certified copies there, the Property Appraiser keeps its Crystal River office there in Suite 400, and the Tax Collector’s Crystal River driver license office is there too.

The Publix shopping center at State Road 44 and County Road 486 is about 19 minutes on foot or a quick drive, with The UPS Store for printing and a notary. A little over a mile west on Gulf to Lake Highway, Los Magueyes Mexican Restaurant at 6875 West Gulf to Lake Highway serves lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. every day, and on the same stretch Brannen Bank, a Citrus County bank headquartered in Inverness, runs a drive-thru only East Crystal River office at 6901 West Gulf to Lake Highway, at (352) 795-0804, which helps if you bank there and need a cashier’s check. The Crystal River Post Office is downtown at 18 NE 4th Avenue, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, at 352-795-2030.

The Citrus County Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a veteran disabled 10 percent or more, and a full exemption on the homestead for a veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, which carries to a surviving spouse. A veteran 65 or older with a combat-related disability may also qualify for a discount. Each is proved with a letter from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or the U.S. government.

Citrus County Veteran Services helps with compensation, pensions, burial and death benefits, and VA home loan certificates. The office is at 2804 West Marc Knighton Court in Lecanto, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed from noon to 1 p.m., at 352-527-5915. If the veteran is homebound, the county says its Veteran Services Officers can make home visits to complete the documents for the VA.

Marriage or divorce often leaves a home titled in a name you no longer use. We write the new deed with both names, the name on your old deed and your name today, so the record connects them and a future title search does not stall on the difference.

Your driver license should match as well. The state requires a license name change to be made in person, after the Social Security Administration has updated your name. In Crystal River the Citrus County Tax Collector’s driver license and motor vehicle office is in the same West Citrus Government Center at 1540 North Meadowcrest Boulevard, with driver license service weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 352-341-6500. Remember that Social Security will not take an electronically certified court record, so bring a paper certified copy from the Clerk’s counter if your name change came from a court order.