Estate Planning Attorney for Palm Harbor, 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. The Palm Harbor Library offers a notary for $5 a stamp, cash or credit card, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. when a notary is available. The library asks you to call ahead at (727) 784-3332 and choose Reference Services, so a notary is there when you arrive.

Florida law will not let the Clerk record a deed unless it prints the name and post office address of each witness, the name and address of the person who prepared it, and leaves a blank space three inches square in the top right corner of the first page for the Clerk. When we draft your deed, those details are on it.

The library sits on Nebraska Avenue just west of US 19 North. For a sandwich or groceries afterward, Sprouts Farmers Market at 33652 US Highway 19 North is about 5 minutes on foot and open every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. If you have a few minutes to wait, the library’s reading garden is a small outdoor space to sit, and a freshwater aquarium of tetras and angelfish is inside.

On the first Tuesday of each month, a volunteer from SHINE, the state’s free Medicare counseling program, answers Medicare questions at the library by appointment through the same Reference Services line. A signing day and a Medicare question can be one trip.

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

Palm Harbor is an unincorporated community, so there is no city hall and no town clerk. Every deed on a Palm Harbor home is recorded by the office of Ken Burke, the Pinellas County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, which keeps the county’s Official Records. The Property Appraiser says so plainly on its own site and sends questions about a recorded document to the Clerk at (727) 464-7000. The Clerk serves the county from the courthouse at 315 Court Street in Clearwater and from a branch in St. Petersburg.

You will not need to drive to either one. We record your deed electronically, so the signed deed never has to travel by mail. Florida law sets the recording fee for every county at $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 Mike Twitty, the Pinellas County Property Appraiser. The office closest to Palm Harbor is at Northside Square, 29269 US Highway 19 North in Clearwater, under five miles south of the library by car. The Property Appraiser also has offices on the second floor of the courthouse at 315 Court Street in Clearwater and beside the Tax Collector at 13025 Starkey Road in Largo. All answer at (727) 464-3207, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and exemption questions also go through the office’s online form.

You must own the home and make it your permanent residence on January 1, and the application is due by March 1. You can file online or at any of the offices. The Property Appraiser puts the exemption at up to $51,411 off the assessed value, with the first $25,000 fully exempt.

The Pinellas Property Appraiser answers the lady bird question in its own FAQ. A deed in which you keep a life estate or an enhanced life estate, which is what a lady bird deed does, does not adjust your Save Our Homes cap, because you keep the title the exemption needs. The same FAQ adds that the people named to receive the house do not inherit your capped value when you die. The homestead page also says an exemption ends when ownership changes in any manner, so we tell you whether your deed needs a new application, and the exemptions staff can confirm it before March 1.

If your home is in a trust, the Property Appraiser lists three conditions for keeping the exemption and the cap, namely that you are a trustee or beneficiary, that you have the right to live there, and that the deed into the trust is recorded.

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 Pinellas 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 Pinellas County issues certified death certificates at its Mid-County office, 8751 Ulmerton Road in Largo, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., for $9 a copy. Vital Statistics answers at 727-507-4330, extension 6316. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on, every request needs a photo ID, and the cause of death is released only to family or a legal representative.

The Property Appraiser also asks the family to tell its office about the death, with the death certificate, through the Change Mailing Address tool on the property’s page at pcpao.gov. Notice matters most when a sole owner had the homestead exemption, because the new owner has to act to avoid a lien for an exemption that no longer applies. 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. Search the Clerk first. The Property Appraiser says a newly recorded deed can take four to six weeks to show on its own site, pcpao.gov, where each parcel page links to its last recorded deed.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home, or send it to the Palm Harbor Library at 2330 Nebraska Avenue. The library takes print jobs from a phone or laptop through its Princh mobile printing (printer ID 111276) and releases them at the terminal in the Adult Services area once you pay, at 10 cents a page in black and white and 50 cents in color, with legal-size paper at no extra cost. Print jobs wait 24 hours. The library is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at (727) 784-3332.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, Florida law sets the Clerk’s charge at $1 a page for the copy and $2 a page to certify it.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. Pinellas County describes the service as notifying you by phone or email of any document recorded against your property in the Official Records. Watching the records for your name is the simplest guard there is against someone recording a false deed on your house.

Old downtown Palm Harbor is about a mile and a half west of the library, at the other end of Nebraska Avenue, a few minutes by car. Fifth Third Bank has its Palm Harbor branch downtown at 1027 Nebraska Avenue, which helps if you bank there and need a cashier’s check. Ohana Fresh, a cold-pressed juice bar and cafe at 1090 Michigan Avenue with indoor and outdoor patio seating, is about 6 minutes on foot from the bank.

Pop Stansell Park sits on the quiet water of Sutherland Bayou, about 8 minutes on foot from the bank. Palm Harbor Parks and Recreation runs the park, with a covered band shell, a fishing pier, a kayak launch and three picnic pavilions, and it makes a calm place to sit before the drive home. The bayou keeps the old name of the place, because downtown Palm Harbor was once the town of Sutherland.

To mail anything, the Palm Harbor post office at 495 Alt 19 is about 15 minutes on foot from the bank. Its windows are open weekdays from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, at (727) 773-1549.

The Palm Harbor Museum is in the Hartley House at 2043 Curlew Road, at the corner of Belcher Road, which Thomas Hartley built between 1914 and 1919. The Palm Harbor Historical Society, formed in 1983, renovated the house and opened it as the museum in 1998, after Pinellas County acquired it when Belcher Road was widened. The museum is free and open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with parking off Curlew Road, at (727) 724-3054.

The library has its own story. A kindergarten teacher named Jeannette Malouf proposed a library to the Palm Harbor Civic Club in February 1978, because the nearest ones in Dunedin and Tarpon Springs were a twenty-minute drive and charged Palm Harbor families a fee. The first library opened on April 1, 1978, in a donated house on Omaha Avenue, and the building on Nebraska Avenue opened on July 5, 1988.

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 Pinellas Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more, on top of the $51,411 homestead exemption, and a full exemption on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability. Once the VA letter arrives, the exemption dates from the VA’s rating decision and your application, and the office can refund excess taxes for up to four years. A surviving spouse who has not remarried can keep the $5,000 exemption by applying by March 1 with the veteran’s death certificate and latest VA rating decision.

Pinellas County Veterans Services helps with the paperwork from its office at 2189 Cleveland Street, Suite 263, in Clearwater, the closer of its two offices to Palm Harbor. The office is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., at (727) 464-8460. Beginning in March 2025 the division reviewed veterans’ property tax exemptions, and of the records it could check, 11.9 percent showed a higher disability rating than the exemption reflected, which raised the veteran’s exemption, in many cases going back three years.

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. The Property Appraiser will also update your name on its records within about a week through the name change request on its site, and its page says that change does not alter your deed.

Your driver license should match as well. In Pinellas County driver licenses are issued by Adam Ross, the Tax Collector, whose office requires a name change in person, at least 24 hours after Social Security has updated your name. Bring a U.S. passport in your new name, or the original or certified marriage certificate, divorce decree or court order, and every document linking your birth name to your name today if the name has changed more than once. A church marriage document is not accepted. The office closest to Palm Harbor is North County, at 29399 US Highway 19 North, Suite 100, in Clearwater, behind the Olive Garden, open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Appointments are encouraged, and questions go to 727-464-7777. The same office takes property tax payments.