Estate Planning Attorney for Palm Coast, 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 in Palm Coast or from wherever you are. The Clerk’s Recording Division notarizes only notices of commencement, so a deed has to be notarized before it reaches the Clerk.

The Clerk publishes what a recorded deed must carry. Each grantor’s signature is notarized with the name and address printed below it, the notary’s name is printed, two witnesses sign with their names printed below their signatures, the full legal description appears on the deed, and the grantee’s mailing address and the preparer’s name and address go on its face. The Clerk also asks that nothing be highlighted, because color scans as black. When we draft your deed, those are handled.

If you have business at Palm Coast City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, it is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 386-986-2360. Central Park in Town Center, at 975 Central Avenue, is about 9 minutes on foot, open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with parking, restrooms and a half-mile bricked walking path around the fountain at its center. The Stage at Town Center, at 1500 Central Avenue, is about 17 minutes on foot and hosts the city’s Beats and Eats evenings of food trucks and live music monthly through October 2026.

The banks and shops of Town Center sit along Belle Terre Parkway, a short drive from City Hall. Wells Fargo has a branch at 836 Belle Terre Parkway and PNC one at 746 Belle Terre Parkway, if you bank at either and need a cashier’s check. The Palm Coast post office is a short drive away at 2 Pine Cone Drive, with its retail window open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 386-447-9880, which helps when an original has to go out by certified mail.

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

In Flagler County, deeds are recorded by the Recording Division of the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, Tom Bexley. Palm Coast is the county’s largest city, but the Clerk has no office in Palm Coast. The Recording Division is on the first floor of the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Building 1, in Bunnell, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Recording Division answers at 386-313-4360, and the Clerk takes email through the contact form on its site. If you do need to go in person, the Clerk now takes bookings for recording services.

You will not need to drive to Bunnell. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is the first vendor on the Clerk’s own eRecording page. The Clerk says an e-recorded document is recorded and returned to the submitter within hours instead of days. Simplifile’s free consumer portal will not take a deed at all, which is one more reason a deed goes through an attorney or title company account.

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 James E. Gardner, Jr., the Flagler County Property Appraiser. The office is on the same Bunnell campus as the Clerk, at 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Suite 201, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 386-313-4150 and [email protected]. The Property Appraiser lists no office in Palm Coast.

You must own the home and make it your permanent residence on January 1, and the deadline is March 1. Flagler asks every first-time applicant to come to the office in person, with a Florida driver license, vehicle registration and voter registration showing the homestead address, Social Security numbers for both spouses, and a copy of the recorded deed or tax bill. If the home is in a trust, bring a copy of the entire trust.

The Property Appraiser warns that a homestead exemption does not follow you to a new home in Flagler County. When your lady bird deed records, call 386-313-4150 and ask whether the office needs anything new from you. We can make that call with you.

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 Flagler 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 Flagler County, Vital Statistics, at 200 Dr. Carter Boulevard in Bunnell, at 386-586-2164, extension 7133. Certificates are issued on a walk-in basis for Florida deaths from 2009 on, at $10 each, and the office takes cash, checks, Visa and MasterCard. A copy showing the cause of death goes only to close family or someone who shows an interest in the estate, such as a will. 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 public computers for the same search sit in the Official Records Division on the first floor of the Justice Center.

For a paper copy close to home, the Palm Coast Library at 2500 Palm Coast Parkway Northwest prints from its computers or from your own phone through its mobile print service, at 15 cents a page in black and white and 40 cents in color, with a $1 fee when you pay by card. The library opens Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 386-446-6763, and it is a short drive from City Hall. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page for the copy and $2 to certify it.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Recording Activity Notifications. All the Clerk needs is your first and last name and an email address. From that day on, each alert gives the document number and type, the recorded date and the name, so you can look the document up yourself. Confirm the link the Clerk emails you when you sign up, because the alerts do not start until you do.

Palm Coast is one of Florida’s newest cities, incorporated in 1999, and it sits on 70 miles of saltwater and freshwater canals and the Intracoastal Waterway. The first City Council appointed its first co-historians the next year, when the Palm Coast Historical Society was formed, and the Society’s museum is now at James F. Holland Memorial Park, 18 Florida Park Drive, beside a playground built to look like the coquina ruins of the Bulow Plantation Sugar Mill.

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 Flagler Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a Florida resident with a service-connected disability of at least 10 percent, and a total exemption for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, which also reaches surviving spouses of qualifying veterans. A veteran 65 or older with a combat-related disability may receive a discount equal to the disability percentage on Form DR-501DV.

Flagler County Veterans Services helps with the paperwork at no charge, in the Government Services Building at 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Suite 108, in Bunnell, next door to the Property Appraiser. The office is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed from noon to 1 p.m., and visits are by appointment, so call ahead through the county’s main line at 386-313-4000. The same office processes Flagler’s Active Military Combat Duty Grant, which reimburses up to $1,000 of county property tax on the homestead of a Flagler service member who served 45 days or more in a designated combat zone in a calendar year.

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, because the Property Appraiser asks for a Florida driver license with the homestead address. 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. Palm Coast has its own service center at 213 St Joe Plaza Drive, run by the Flagler County Tax Collector, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 386-313-4160.