Estate Planning Attorney for Fort Myers, 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. The Clerk’s own fee schedule lists notary service at $10 an instrument, so if you are already downtown, call Official Records at 239-533-5007 to ask whether the counter can notarize that day.

The Lee Clerk publishes what a deed needs before it will record. The list includes a prepared-by line with the name and address of the person who drafted it, the mailing addresses of both the owner and the person receiving the home, the names and addresses of both witnesses printed under their signatures, a complete notary block with the seal and commission expiration date, and a blank square three inches by three inches in the top right corner of the first page for the Clerk’s stamp. When we draft your deed, those are handled.

The Clerk’s office sits in the River District, so the errands around it are short walks. Two local banks have branches close by, Sanibel Captiva Community Bank at 1533 Hendry Street about 4 minutes on foot, and Edison National Bank at 2105 First Street about 6 minutes away, so if you bank at either one, a cashier’s check is a quick stop. The Downtown Fort Myers Post Office at 1350 Monroe Street, about 6 minutes on foot, is the place to send certified mail, with window hours weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and no Saturday window.

For hot coffee, the Starbucks at First Street and Broadway, 1514 Broadway, is about 4 minutes on foot from the Clerk. For lunch by the water, Oxbow at 1300 Hendry Street serves lunch and dinner dockside on the Caloosahatchee, about 10 minutes on foot, at 239-314-3856. The Veranda, across Second Street at 2122 Second Street and about 2 minutes on foot, has served dinner downtown since 1978, Monday to Saturday from 5 p.m., with the bar opening at 4. After a visit to the library, Cornog Plaza outside it, home of the Southwest Florida Reading Festival, is an easy place to sit a while.

If you drive in, park at the county’s public lot on the corner of Second Street and Hendry Street, 2201 Second Street, about 2 minutes on foot from the Clerk’s door. On weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the county posts the rate as $1.35 for the first hour and $1.00 for each additional half hour, and the lot takes mobile payment.

If you have an hour to spare, the Edison and Ford Winter Estates at 2350 McGregor Boulevard are about 20 minutes on foot along the river. The estates date from 1885, when Thomas Edison first visited Southwest Florida and bought the land to build a winter home, and today twenty acres of historic gardens surround the restored botanical laboratory where Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone worked side by side. The estates are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

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

In Lee County, deeds are recorded by the Official Records office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, Kevin C. Karnes, and the main office is in downtown Fort Myers, on the 2nd floor of the Administration Building at 2115 Second Street. The Clerk lists that address first for recording a document in person. Official Records answers at 239-533-5007, and the Clerk’s call center runs Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., with the lobby open until 5 p.m. The mailing address for recordings is P.O. Box 2278, Fort Myers, FL 33902.

The Second Street office also has a drop box outside for recordings. The Clerk asks that the deed, the payment and a self-addressed stamped envelope go in one sealed envelope, and the Clerk holds a recorded document that arrives without that envelope and destroys it after 90 days.

You will not need to walk it in. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Lee Clerk’s own list of e-recording vendors, so the deed never travels by mail and the original never leaves our hands. The Clerk says plainly that it cannot promise same-day recording for anything it receives. 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.

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 Matt Caldwell, the Lee County Property Appraiser, whose office is also downtown, on the 4th floor of the Melvin Morgan Constitutional Complex at 2480 Thompson Street, about 12 minutes on foot from the Clerk. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The main line is 239-533-6100, and exemption questions go to [email protected]. You can file online, by email, in person, or by mail to P.O. Box 1546, Fort Myers, FL 33902, and the deadline is March 1.

Fort Myers owners 65 and older should know one local number. The City of Fort Myers has adopted the limited-income senior exemption at $25,000. The senior exemption has its own March 1 deadline, and the Property Appraiser accepts the income paperwork until June 1.

The Property Appraiser also says that when ownership of a homestead changes in any manner, including putting the home into certain kinds of trusts, you need to contact the office. A lady bird deed changes the title too, so we tell you whether yours calls for a call to the exemptions desk, and you can ask them directly at 239-533-6100.

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 Lee 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 Lee Clerk records only a certified Florida death certificate issued without the cause of death, so the family orders that version.

The Department of Health in Lee County issues death certificates at the Pondella Clinic, 83 Pondella Road in North Fort Myers, a short drive across the Caloosahatchee from downtown, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Each certificate is $11, a rush order adds $10, and the clinic’s main line is 239-461-6100. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on and asks for a photo ID. 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 print a copy on your own computer. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, you can order an e-certified copy online for $8, or ask for one at the Official Records counter on Second Street.

To print a copy in town, the Fort Myers Regional Library at 2450 First Street is about 9 minutes on foot from the Clerk’s office. The library offers document copying, scanning and printing, at 10 cents a page in black and white and $1 a page in color, paid in cash. The library is open Monday to Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday until 6 p.m., and Friday and Saturday until 5 p.m., and answers at 239-479-4636.

The same Official Records office keeps a piece of the county’s past. The earliest recorded document in Lee County dates to 1887, the year Lee became a county, and the Clerk’s Historical Document Library there holds more than 150 original books, among them the Marks and Brands Record 2 book from 1899, where cattlemen and hog ranchers registered the brands on their livestock. The Clerk cannot copy the old books, but visitors may photograph pages or use a hand-held scanner.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. The Clerk emails you within 24 hours when a deed, mortgage or other land record with your registered name or parcel number is recorded, and you can register trusts as well as people. The email comes from Lee Clerk Official Records with the subject line Clerk Recording Activity Notification. If an alert ever shows a deed you did not sign, the Clerk’s page says to report it to the law enforcement agency where the property sits, and we can take it from there.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption, and the proof comes from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The Lee County Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more, a full exemption from property taxes on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, and a discount equal to the disability rating when part of the disability is combat-related. Surviving spouses can keep some of these exemptions.

Lee County’s Veteran Services team helps with the VA side of this, including a copy of your DD-214, which the Property Appraiser asks for with the combat-related discount. The team works from Lee County Human and Veteran Services at 2440 Thompson Street, about 10 minutes on foot from the Clerk, by phone or by appointment, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the county says visitors without an appointment are not being accepted. Call 239-533-8381 or email [email protected].

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 Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles requires every name change on a license to be made in person, and only after the Social Security Administration has updated your name, allowing 24 to 48 hours after that. In Lee County the Tax Collector runs the driver license offices, and the Fort Myers office is in the same Constitutional Complex as the Property Appraiser, 2480 Thompson Street, open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 239-533-6000. Book a Driver License or ID Change or Replacement appointment on the Tax Collector’s website first.