Estate Planning Attorney for Ocala, 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 your own kitchen table. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store at 3512 East Silver Springs Boulevard, a short drive east of downtown, lists notary service and is open seven days, at 352-421-5292. Call ahead to confirm when a notary is in.

Marion’s Clerk prints the notary certificate rules in its own recording FAQ, including the county line “State of Florida, County of,” whether the signer appeared in person or by audio-video communication, the exact date, the type of identification relied on, and the notary’s printed name and seal. When we prepare your deed, the certificate is written to that list.

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

In Marion County, deeds are recorded by the Official Records department of Gregory C. Harrell, the Clerk of Court and Comptroller. The department is not in the courthouse. Official Records sits in the Clerk of Court Annex Building at 19 North Pine Avenue in downtown Ocala, Room 124 on the first floor, open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The direct line is 352-671-5630. The Clerk does not receive mail at the Annex. Recording mail goes at Post Office Box 1030, and overnight packages go to the Judicial Center, 110 NW 1st Avenue.

You will not need to go downtown. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of accepted e-recording vendors. The Clerk posts the recording fee as $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed records for $18.50. Marion also charges $1 for each name past the fourth on a document, and counts every variation of a name as a separate name, which is one more reason the names on your deed are typed exactly the same way each time.

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 Jimmy H. Cowan, Jr., the Marion County Property Appraiser, at 501 SE 25th Avenue in Ocala. The office is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., welcomes walk-ins or an appointment, and answers at 352-368-8300 or by email at [email protected]. Exemption questions can also go through the office’s online contact form.

The Property Appraiser is taking applications now for 2027 exemptions, and the deadline is Monday, March 1, 2027. You can file online after requesting a PIN, which the office emails to you. If you are moving from another Florida homestead, the online filing asks the portability questions for you. The office asks qualified seniors and combat veterans to come in person for those additional exemptions.

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 Marion 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 come from the Department of Health in Marion County at its Ocala facility, 1801 SE 32nd Avenue, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 352-629-0137, for $10 a copy. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on and asks for a valid photo ID.

The Clerk adds two details worth knowing. The copy recorded with the deed must be the short form, without the cause of death, and recording a one-sided death certificate costs $10. 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, the parcel ID or the book and page. The index shows the date it was last verified, which read September 28, 2026 on the day we checked. Deeds from 1959 to 1964 sit in a separate historic books search, which helps when a family’s paper trail runs that far back.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home, or ask The UPS Store at 3512 East Silver Springs Boulevard, a short drive east of downtown, which lists printing among its services and answers at 352-421-5292. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk sells tamper-proof electronic certified copies of official records online through its e-certify page, and paper certified copies at the Annex counter.

Then take a few minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s Property Alert Service. You register with your email, confirm it, and then choose your parcel ID or your name, and the service alerts you when a document is recorded that matches. The Clerk suggests entering several spellings of your name, last name first, such as Smith John and Smith John A. Watching the records for your name is the simplest guard there is against someone recording a false deed on your house.

Some families come to the Annex or the Judicial Center for another reason and want to know what is close. Downtown parking meters run weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., at $0.75 an hour north of State Road 40 and $1.25 an hour south of it, and take coins, cards and the ParkMobile app. Downtown also has free spaces, including those in the city’s Downtown Parking Garage, and a second garage has opened with its entrances on SW Second and SW Third Avenues.

The Downtown Square, at 1 SE Broadway Street and about 6 minutes on foot from the Annex, is the center of it all, a city park of a little over an acre with a gazebo. Ocala built its first courthouse on the square in 1847, a year after it became the seat of the new Marion County, and when fire destroyed the center of town on Thanksgiving Day in 1883, the town rebuilt in brick, which is how Ocala became the Brick City, a name it still uses. Brick City Southern Kitchen sits on the corner of the Square at 10 South Magnolia Avenue, on Silver Springs Boulevard, about 5 minutes on foot from the Annex, and opens at 11 a.m. every day if the morning runs into lunch.

The errands are close together. Mainstreet Community Bank of Florida has its Ocala office at 112 North Magnolia Avenue, about 6 minutes on foot from the Annex, and Cogent Bank has a branch at 4 SE Broadway Street, about 7 minutes on foot, which helps if you bank at either one and need a cashier’s check. The Ocala Post Office at 400 SW 1st Avenue, about 10 minutes on foot, is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at 352-867-1603.

Florida gives disabled veterans more than the basic homestead exemption, proved with a letter from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Marion Property Appraiser asks combat veterans to come in person for those additional exemptions, at 501 SE 25th Avenue or 352-368-8300.

Marion County Veterans Services helps with VA benefits at no charge, at 2730 East Silver Springs Boulevard, a short drive east of downtown. The office is open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and asks you to call 352-671-8422 to make an appointment.

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. The Marion Tax Collector’s full-service driver license office is at 110 SE 25th Avenue in Ocala, on the same avenue as the Property Appraiser, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 352-368-8200. The Tax Collector’s other Ocala offices offer limited driver license services, so a name change is surest at SE 25th Avenue.