Estate Planning Attorney for Jacksonville, 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. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store on North Hogan Street lists notary service, and its own page asks you to call ahead or make an appointment because a notary is not always on duty.

The Duval Clerk publishes its own recording checklist, and our deeds follow it. The first page leaves a blank 3 by 3 inch space in the upper right corner for the Clerk’s stamp, and every later page leaves 1 by 3 inches. The deed carries the new owner’s mailing address and the name and address of the person who prepared it, and each signer and witness prints a name under the signature.

If a court date or an errand brings you to the courthouse anyway, coffee is close. Something Better Cafe + Kitchen at 236 West Adams Street, about 5 minutes on foot, opens at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays and closes at 3 p.m. Chamblin’s Uptown at 215 North Laura Street, about 8 minutes away, is an independent bookstore with a cafe, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The cafe line is 904-674-0870.

For a cashier’s check, if you bank there, Chase has a branch at 112 West Adams Street at Laura Street and Ameris Bank has one at 200 West Forsyth Street, each about 8 minutes on foot. The nearest post office with a counter is the Jacksonville main office at 1100 Kings Road, a short drive west, with window service weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday until 6 p.m. When you are done, James Weldon Johnson Park at 117 West Duval Street is about 9 minutes away, and the Northbank Riverwalk along the St. Johns River, open around the clock with benches and scenic overlooks, is about 12 minutes on foot at Independent Drive. The Clerk names the Clay Street garage at 125 North Clay Street, across Adams Street from the courthouse, as the garage for jurors.

On the walk east along Forsyth Street, about 14 minutes from the courthouse, the Florida Theatre at 128 East Forsyth Street opened on April 8, 1927 as the largest theatre in Florida, and in August 1956 a juvenile court judge sat in its back row with arrest warrants ready in case Elvis Presley moved too suggestively on its stage.

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

In Duval County, deeds are recorded by the Recording Department of Jody Phillips, the Clerk of the Circuit Court, at the Duval County Courthouse, 501 West Adams Street in downtown Jacksonville, between Pearl and Broad Streets. The department is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., except holidays, and answers at 904-255-2000. The Clerk publishes no email address for recording. A deed carried in person is scanned, recorded and handed back to you while you wait. The Clerk’s current page gives no counter room for recording, so call ahead if you plan to walk one in.

The Clerk also records at its Beaches Branch in Tradewinds Plaza, 1543 Atlantic Boulevard in Neptune Beach, open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. by appointment or by joining the same-day line at the kiosk. A drop box inside the branch takes documents for anyone who would rather not wait.

You will not need to go to either office. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, one of the approved e-recording vendors the Clerk lists by name. The Clerk is candid that it cannot promise same-day or next-day recording for anything that arrives by mail or electronically, and it processes documents in the order they come in. 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 Joyce Morgan, the Duval County Property Appraiser, in the Yates Building at 231 East Forsyth Street, about 15 minutes on foot from the courthouse. The Customer Service and Exemptions Division is in Room 260, open weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at 904-255-5900 or [email protected]. The building is entered from Forsyth Street, the garage underneath is entered from Adams Street, and visitors need identification.

You can file for homestead online. You must own the home and live in it as your permanent residence on January 1, and the deadline to file on time for the 2027 tax roll is March 1, 2027. A paper application can be hand delivered, mailed to Room 260, faxed to 904-255-7963 or emailed to [email protected].

The Property Appraiser renews homestead automatically each January only when nothing about the property, its ownership or its use has changed, and says a change in ownership can remove or alter the exemption. A lady bird deed changes the title, so we tell you whether yours needs a new application, and the Exemptions Division can confirm it before March 1. For a home held in a trust, the Property Appraiser asks for a copy of the entire trust agreement with the application.

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 Duval 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 Duval County issues certified death certificates at its Vital Statistics office, 3225 University Boulevard South, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., at 904-253-1620. The first certificate costs $15 and each additional copy $10, a photo ID must come with every request, and the cause of death is released only to family or a legal representative. The county office covers Florida deaths from 2009 on. We prepare and record the rest.

Families whose home is still in the name of a parent who died without a plan face a harder road. The Property Appraiser warns that an unresolved title can affect the homestead exemption, and points those families to the heirs’ property program of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and LISC Jacksonville.

We send you the recorded deed as soon as the Clerk returns it. The deed also appears in the Clerk’s official records search, which covers everything recorded in Duval County since 1988, and an uncertified copy there downloads or prints free. For a deed recorded before 1988, the Clerk’s Official Records and Research staff in Room 1253 of the courthouse, at 904-255-2025, find it for you.

For a paper copy printed downtown, The UPS Store #4509 at 221 North Hogan Street, between Adams and Monroe Streets, lists printing among its services, at 904-355-4190. The store is about 6 minutes on foot from the courthouse. The Main Library at 303 North Laura Street, about 8 minutes on foot and open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., prints from its public printers for 15 cents a black and white page and 50 cents a color page with a library card, and its Mobile Print service lets you send the file from home and pick up the pages at the desk.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk’s eCertify service delivers one online for the $2 certification fee plus a $6 processing fee, and the download link stays good for 30 days, so you can print as many copies as you need. In Room 1253 the same electronic copy costs $2, plus $1 a page for paper.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. The service watches names, not addresses, takes up to 10 names at a time, and alerts you by email, text message or phone call within 48 hours whenever a document is recorded under one of them. More than 45,000 Duval owners and businesses have signed up. If an alert ever shows a deed you did not sign, the Clerk tells you to call the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at 904-630-0500 first.

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 Duval County Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a veteran disabled at least 10 percent in war or by service-connected misfortune, and a full exemption on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, which in some cases carries over to the surviving spouse. The surviving spouse of a veteran who died from service-connected causes on active duty can also receive a full exemption. Each is filed with the Exemptions Division in Room 260 of the Yates Building, 904-255-5900.

The City of Jacksonville’s Military Affairs and Veterans Department helps with VA benefits and claims at no cost. The office is at 117 West Duval Street, Suite 175, about 9 minutes on foot from the courthouse, and answers at 904-255-5550 and [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 at a local office, and only after the Social Security Administration has updated your name, allowing 24 to 48 hours after that. Downtown, the Duval County Tax Collector runs a driver license office at 231 East Forsyth Street, in the same Yates Building as the Property Appraiser, so a license and a homestead question can be handled on one trip. The office is open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., answers at 904-255-5700, and takes appointments online through the Tax Collector.