Estate Planning Attorney for Hialeah, 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 at your kitchen table in Hialeah with the witnesses in the room and the notary on the screen.

If you are recording a deed yourself, the Clerk posts a checklist. The deed must be the original, with the addresses of the grantor and grantee, two witnesses whose printed names and post office addresses appear under their signatures, a full notary acknowledgment and a “prepared by” statement. The Clerk also asks for a Property Transfer form, encourages the folio number, and wants a self-addressed stamped envelope for the return. When we draft it, those are handled.

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

A deed on a Hialeah home is recorded by the Miami-Dade Office of County Recorder, run by the Clerk of the Court and Comptroller, Juan Fernandez-Barquin. The Recorder is downtown, on the fifth floor of the Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center, 20 NW 1st Avenue, Miami, open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the Recorder’s phone is 786-463-0566.

The Clerk does have a Hialeah District Court at 11 East 6th Street, about 2 minutes on foot from Hialeah City Hall, open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Clerk’s page for that courthouse lists civil cases, marriage licenses, traffic and parking in Room 100 and domestic violence intake in Room 105, and does not list recording. A deed handed in at the Hialeah counter therefore still has to travel downtown.

You will not need to make either trip. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of approved e-recording services. The Clerk reviews each e-recorded document before it becomes public, which usually takes 1 to 3 business days. The posted recording fee is $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, 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 the Property Appraiser of Miami-Dade County, Tomás Regalado. The office has no branch in Hialeah. Its main office is in Suite 710 of the Stephen P. Clark Center, 111 NW 1st Street, Miami, and its other office is in Cutler Bay, both open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The residential exemptions line is 305-375-4712. You can apply through the Property Appraiser’s online exemptions portal, and the application and documents are due by March 1.

The Property Appraiser brings its exemption specialists to Hialeah several times a year. In 2026 it held outreach events at the Milander Center for Arts and Entertainment, 4800 Palm Avenue, on February 26, and at the Miami Dade College Hialeah Campus, 1780 West 49th Street, on July 28, each offering one-on-one help with homestead applications. Upcoming events are posted on the Property Appraiser’s event list.

Questions about a recorded deed or a change of ownership go to the deed line at 305-375-4064 or to [email protected], which is also the address for updating where your tax bill is mailed.

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 Miami-Dade 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 Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade issues death certificates without an appointment, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Its North Dade Vital Records office carries a Hialeah address, 18680 NW 67th Avenue, north of the city center, and its phone is 305-628-7230. The downtown Health District Center at 1350 NW 14th Street, Miami, issues them too, at 305-575-5030. Both charge $20 for the first certificate and $16 for each additional copy, and ask for a copy of a valid ID with every request. 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 at home for the file drawer.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the County Recorder charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. You register your folio number, and the Clerk emails you within 24 hours whenever a deed is recorded against it. The alert is the simplest early warning there is against someone recording a false deed on your house. If one ever appears, the Clerk’s property fraud page posts fill-in forms for a quiet title complaint over a forged deed, and we can take it from there.

Hialeah City Hall is at 501 Palm Avenue, a stretch the City’s website now lists as 501 President Donald J. Trump Avenue, and the City’s main number is 305-883-5800. The errands that go with a deed are close by.

The Hialeah post office at 325 East 1st Avenue is about 7 minutes on foot southeast of City Hall. The retail counter is open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon, and the phone is 305-889-5421, which helps when an original has to go out by certified mail.

Bank of America has its Hialeah Miami Springs financial center and ATM at 175 East Hialeah Drive, about 11 minutes on foot from City Hall, if you bank there and need a cashier’s check.

When you are done, Babcock Park at 651 East 4th Avenue, a city park with a children’s playground and basketball courts, is about 14 minutes on foot east of City Hall.

To print a document near City Hall, the City’s Curtiss e-Library at 501 East 4th Avenue, about 12 minutes on foot, prints in black and white for 20 cents a page and in color for 50 cents. The branch is open Monday to Thursday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., at 305-883-6950. The main John F. Kennedy Library at 190 West 49th Street is open longer, Monday to Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at 305-821-2700, and it lets you send a document from your phone and pick up the printout the same day.

For lunch, Siamo Ristorante, a family-owned Italian restaurant and pizzeria across the canal at 17 Westward Drive in Miami Springs, is about 15 minutes on foot from City Hall. The restaurant opens at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday and is closed Mondays, at 305-449-9553.

For a cafecito, Karla Cuban Bakery’s Hialeah shop at 7950 West 28th Avenue, on the west side of the city, has a ventanita, the little walk-up window, serving cortadito, croquetas and pastelitos, and opens at 6 a.m. The bakery is a drive from City Hall rather than a walk.

To print or copy a document, the Office Depot at 3600 NW Le Jeune Road in Miami Springs has a print counter and self-service kiosks for copies, scans and faxes. The store is open weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., at 305-884-8882, and it is a short drive south of City Hall.

The landmark every Hialeah owner knows is Hialeah Park, at 100 East 32nd Street, a short drive north of City Hall. The track’s own history says it opened for thoroughbred racing on January 15, 1925, and that Joseph Widener imported its first flamingos from Cuba in 1934 for the infield lake. The flock bred there so well that the infield was named a National Audubon sanctuary, and Amelia Earhart said her farewell to the continental United States from Hialeah before her 1937 flight around the world. The park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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 Miami-Dade Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 reduction in assessed value for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected disability of at least 10 percent, and an exemption from all property taxes on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability. Veterans 65 and older with a combat-related disability have a separate application, form DR-501DV. Each exemption carries over to an un-remarried surviving spouse who holds title and homestead, and each application with its VA letter is due by March 1.

Miami-Dade County’s Veteran Services Program helps veterans and their families apply for VA benefits at no cost, and it comes to Hialeah every week. Its counselor is at the Hialeah Community Resource Center, 300 East 1st Avenue, about 6 minutes on foot from City Hall, on Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 305-884-4801. Bring proof of military service.

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 Miami-Dade the driver license offices are now run by the Tax Collector, Dariel Fernandez. The nearest full-service office to Hialeah City Hall is Northside, at 7900 NW 27th Avenue in Miami, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 305-375-5448, and the Tax Collector says its offices take both appointments and walk-ins during those hours. Book only through mdctaxcollector.gov, because the Tax Collector has warned that unofficial appointment websites are issuing invalid confirmations.