Estate Planning Attorney for New Port Richey, 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, so there is no need to find a notary near the county offices.

The Pasco Clerk publishes its rules for a recorded deed. Each witness’s name and address are printed beneath the signature, the deed carries the mailing addresses of the grantor and grantee, the name and address of whoever prepared it, the legal description, the consideration and a return address, and the notary’s printed name appears below the notary’s signature. The Clerk will not record a deed that is missing the witness names and addresses. When we draft your deed, those are handled.

If you do come to the Government Center, the Clerk’s court office is in the West Pasco Judicial Center at 7530 Little Road, about 7 minutes on foot across the campus, and an independent coffee bar and deli called @ Cafe operates inside that building, past security. For breakfast or lunch, Boulevard Family Restaurant at 7507 Little Road serves both from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and to 2 p.m. on weekends, about 10 minutes on foot, at (727) 807-9946. The banks cluster at the corner of Little Road and Ridge Road, where Chase has a branch at 8298 Ridge Road and Truist has one at 8939 Little Road, if you bank at either one for a cashier’s check. The Chase branch is about 28 minutes on foot, so most people drive.

The New Port Richey post office is downtown at 6550 Main Street, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. From there, Sims Park at 6341 Bank Street is about 18 minutes on foot, a city park on the Cotee River with a playground, a splash pad and an amphitheater, open from dawn to dusk, and a quiet place to sit after a morning of errands.

Downtown, the library, the post office and Sims Park sit close together. The post office is about 8 minutes on foot from the library and Sims Park about 10. George R. Sims, one of New Port Richey’s earliest promoters, gave the park to the city in 1924, when it was called Enchantment Park, and asked to be buried about 50 feet from Orange Lake with only a redbud tree to mark the spot, though his remains were later moved to a cemetery. The city’s very first ordinance, Ordinance One, keeps the park the people’s park.

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

In Pasco County, deeds are recorded by the Official Records Department of the Clerk and Comptroller, Nikki Alvarez-Sowles. New Port Richey has its own recording office, so nobody from the west side has to drive to Dade City. Recording happens at the West Pasco Government Center, 8731 Citizens Drive, Suite 220, the county office building on the campus off Little Road, and not at the West Pasco Judicial Center next door, which handles court matters. The office is open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Official Records answers at (727) 847-8086. The Clerk’s east office, at the East Pasco Government Center in Dade City, records deeds too.

You will not need to go to either office. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of e-recording vendors, and the Clerk describes e-recording as simplifying and accelerating the whole recording process. The posted recording fee is $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed costs $18.50 to record. Every deed also carries documentary stamp tax at the posted rate of $0.70 per $100 of consideration.

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 Mike Wells, the Pasco County Property Appraiser. The New Port Richey office is in the same West Pasco Government Center, at 8731 Citizens Drive, Suite 130, the same building as the Clerk’s recording office in Suite 220, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at (727) 847-8151. The office also takes email at [email protected], and mail goes to P.O. Box 401, Dade City, FL 33526.

You must own the home and live in it as your permanent residence on January 1. The Property Appraiser accepts applications year-round, and the deadline for the current year is March 1, so a home you live in on January 1, 2027 must be filed by March 1, 2027. You can file online with a Florida driver’s license or ID and your Social Security number, or file in person.

If your home is held in a trust, the Property Appraiser asks you not to file online and to apply at one of its offices instead, and the Suite 130 counter is the nearest one for New Port Richey. The Property Appraiser also says a sale ends the exemption and requires a new application. A lady bird deed is not a sale, but ask the office whether it wants a new application after one is recorded, so the exemption carries on without a gap.

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 Pasco 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 nearest place to get certified death certificates is the Department of Health in Pasco County’s Summit Professional office at 7509 State Road 52 in Hudson, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 727-619-0300. Each certificate costs $10, the office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on, and the cause of death is released only to a family member or legal representative. Certificates can also be ordered online or by mail. 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, book and page, or instrument number. Pasco’s indexes run from 1975, the recorded images from 1990 to the present, and older deeds back to 1876 are in the Clerk’s free historical records search.

For a paper copy, print it at home, or ask at the Official Records counter in Suite 220 of the West Pasco Government Center. The Clerk charges $1 a page for a copy and $2 to certify a recorded document for a bank or title company. Certified copies can also be ordered by phone at (727) 847-8086, or bought online as a tamper-proof electronic certified copy through the Clerk’s E-Certify service. A card payment carries a 3.5% transaction fee.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. You choose the personal and business names to watch, and Pasco notifies you by email or by phone whenever a deed, mortgage or lien is recorded with one of those names. Registration is also available by calling (800) 728-3858.

If you are downtown instead, the New Port Richey Public Library at 5939 Main Street prints black and white pages for 15 cents and color for 25 cents, makes copies at the same prices, sends faxes for $1 a page and scans for free. The library is open Monday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at (727) 853-1279, and you can send a document from home to its printers before you go.

The West Pasco Government Center sits on the east side of Little Road, about 4 miles east of U.S. Highway 19, three quarters of a mile south of Ridge Road and half a mile north of Massachusetts Avenue. The Tax Collector gives those directions for its own office in the building, and they get you to the Clerk and the Property Appraiser too.

The Sixth Judicial Circuit says the West Pasco Judicial Center next door has a free parking lot, with accessible spaces near the main entrance, and takes parking questions at (727) 847-8128.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption, and the Pasco Property Appraiser’s homestead brochure lists the proof each one needs. An honorably discharged veteran disabled at least 10 percent by service-connected misfortune receives a $5,000 exemption, proved with a certificate from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. A veteran with a total and permanent service-connected disability can have the homestead exempted in full with a VA letter saying so, and a veteran 65 or older whose disability is combat related receives a discount on the tax equal to the disability percentage. An unremarried surviving spouse can keep some of these benefits.

Pasco County Veterans Services has its west side office at 8620 Galen Wilson Boulevard in Port Richey, a short drive from the Government Center, at 727-834-3282. The county’s state accredited service officers help with claims, appeals and military records searches, and the office says plainly, “We’re here for you because we’re veterans too.”

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 Pasco County, licenses are issued by Tax Collector Mike Fasano, and one of his five driver license offices is in Room 120 of the same West Pasco Government Center, the building that holds the Clerk’s recording office in Suite 220 and the Property Appraiser in Suite 130. The office is open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. for Pasco residents, at (727) 847-8165. For a Saturday visit, the Gulf Harbors office at 4720 U.S. Highway 19 opens from 8:30 a.m. to noon for Pasco residents, with no driver license services after 11:30 a.m.