Estate Planning Attorney for Delray Beach, 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, or you can sign in person. In Delray Beach, the Department of Health in Palm Beach County notarizes deeds for $10 at its Vital Statistics office in the Delray Beach Health Center, 225 South Congress Avenue, which added notary service in October 2025. The health center is about 29 minutes on foot from the courthouse, or a short drive west. Bring the complete, unsigned original and a government photo ID, along with your two witnesses.

If you are recording a deed yourself, the Clerk checks it against a posted list. Every deed notarized in Florida must show each witness’s name and address, the first page needs a blank three-inch square in the top right corner for the recording stamp, with a one-by-three-inch space on each page after, and a deed that affects real property needs a “prepared by” statement. A deed sent by mail needs a self-addressed stamped envelope, and payment by mail cannot be cash. When we draft your deed, those are handled.

For hot coffee before a morning hearing, the Starbucks at 205 East Atlantic Avenue is about 7 minutes on foot east of the courthouse, at 561-243-9332. For lunch by the water afterward, Deck 84 at 840 East Atlantic Avenue sits on the Intracoastal Waterway and serves lunch, about 15 minutes on foot, at 561-665-8484. If you bank there, the Seacoast Bank branch at 50 NE 5th Avenue is about 12 minutes on foot, which helps if a cashier’s check is needed.

The library next door is a piece of Delray history in its own right. The library’s own history records that members of the Ladies Improvement Association founded it in 1913 by each donating at least one book from their own shelves, for a first collection of 40 books, and that Henry Flagler sent $10 the next year. The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane flooded the library in its small room in the original Town Hall, and the present building at 100 West Atlantic Avenue opened in 2006.

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

In Palm Beach County, deeds are recorded by the Recording Department of the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, where Shannon Ramsey-Chessman serves as Clerk Ad Interim. Delray Beach has its own Clerk counter. The South County Courthouse at 200 West Atlantic Avenue, Room 1S-124, is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., answers its civil line at (561) 274-1588, and lists recording of documents and record searches among its services. Deeds are not on the short list of documents that only the Main Courthouse in West Palm Beach will take, so a deed can be recorded right here.

You will not need to stand in that line. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of eRecording vendors, so the signed deed never travels by mail. The Clerk’s eRecording page says electronic submission reduces the time gap for recording, and it also says plainly that a mailed original comes back to the sender without a recording stamp. The Clerk posts the recording fee as $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed costs $18.50 to record.

If a court date or a records question does bring you to the courthouse, the Clerk’s directions are to leave I-95 heading east on Atlantic Avenue. Parking is free in the garage across SW 2nd Avenue from the courthouse. The same building handles probate cases for the south end of the county.

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 Dorothy Jacks, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser, and one of the appraiser’s five service centers is in Delray Beach. The South County Service Center is at 14925 Cumberland Drive, Delray Beach, at 561.276.1250, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Exemption questions also go to 561.355.2866 or [email protected]. You can file online, at any service center, or by mail. You must qualify on January 1 and file by March 1, and the appraiser takes late applications in person at a branch until mid-September.

If your home is in a homeowner or condominium association, the appraiser’s community outreach program can bring its staff to the association to answer questions and help residents apply. The program is run from the South County Service Center by Margaux A. Robertson, at 561.894.7751 or [email protected].

Once you qualify, the exemption renews itself, and each December the appraiser mails a pink and white receipt card. The appraiser asks owners to call when ownership changes by sale, marriage, divorce or death, and its homestead page says Florida law requires a new application when you change the manner in which title is held on your existing homestead. Before we record, ask us whether your lady bird deed calls for one, and we will check it with the appraiser’s exemptions staff.

If your home is going into a trust instead of a lady bird deed, the appraiser does not want the trust agreement. The appraiser asks instead for a Certificate of Trust, sent to [email protected] or mailed to Exemption Services at 301 North Olive Avenue in West Palm Beach.

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 Palm Beach 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. Certified death certificates are issued in Delray Beach at the Department of Health’s Vital Statistics office in the Delray Beach Health Center, 225 South Congress Avenue, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (closing at noon on the first Thursday of each month), for $15 a copy. The health center answers at 561-274-3100, and the office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on. We prepare and record the rest.

We send you the recorded deed as soon as the Clerk returns it. The deed also appears in the Clerk’s official records search, where you can look it up by your name and open the recorded image. Images there go back to January 1, 1968, so the deed you received when you bought your Delray Beach home is usually in the same place.

Uncertified, watermarked copies are free to view, save and print from the Clerk’s website. To print one on paper, the Delray Beach Public Library at 100 West Atlantic Avenue, one minute on foot from the courthouse, charges 15 cents a page for black and white and 50 cents for color on its public computers, which need a library card. The library’s second floor also has a scanning station, at 5 cents a page to a USB drive or email and 50 cents a page to send a fax. The library is open Monday through Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday afternoons from September to May, at (561) 266-0194.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify it at the South County counter, or $8 per document for an electronically certified copy ordered online, which downloads right after purchase.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. The Clerk emails you within 24 hours when a document is recorded that exactly matches the name, address or parcel number you registered. Because the match has to be exact, the Clerk asks you to register every variation of your name and address, each owner separately, and a trust as a business name ending in the word Trust.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption, and the proof is a letter from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The Palm Beach County Property Appraiser lists a full exemption from property taxes on the homestead for a veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, proved with a VA benefits letter, and an additional $5,000 exemption for a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more. The appraiser verifies every VA letter with the local VA office before approving it.

The appraiser also lists a property tax discount, equal to the percentage of disability, for a combat-disabled veteran 65 or older, an exemption for service members deployed outside the continental United States, Alaska or Hawaii during the prior year, and exemptions that pass to the surviving spouse of a qualifying veteran. Each of these requires an honorable discharge and a homestead exemption already on the home. For help gathering the paperwork, the appraiser refers veterans to the Palm Beach County Veteran Services office at 561.355.4761.

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, because the Property Appraiser asks for a Florida driver license when you file for homestead. In Palm Beach County, driver licenses are issued by Tax Collector Anne Gannon, and her office lists a name change as one of the updates that cannot be done online. The Delray Beach / South County Service Center at 501 South Congress Avenue, on the east side of Congress just south of West Atlantic Avenue, issues driver licenses weekdays from 8:15 a.m. to 5 p.m., by reservation only, and the Tax Collector answers at (561) 355-2264.