Estate Planning Attorney for Pembroke Pines, 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 in Pembroke Pines. The UPS Store at 10720 Pines Boulevard, Suite H 103, lists notary services seven days a week, and the store asks you to call ahead at 954-272-8869 because a notary is scheduled only when staffing allows. From City Hall at 601 City Center Way the walk is about 18 minutes.

If you are recording a deed yourself, Broward checks it against a list before it will record. Each witness’s printed name and address goes under the signature, the top right corner of the first page needs a three-inch blank square, and the deed needs the parcel number and a “prepared by” line. A deed missing any of these comes back, which in the mail queue can mean weeks. When we draft it, those are handled.

Most errands around a signing sit on Pines Boulevard just north of City Hall. Bonjour French Bakery & Cafe at 10800 Pines Boulevard serves coffee, breakfast and lunch, open from 7 a.m. Monday through Saturday and from 8 a.m. on Sunday, about 15 minutes on foot. Bank of America at 10050 Pines Boulevard and BankUnited at 10090 Pines Boulevard are about 17 minutes on foot, which helps if you bank at one of them and need a cashier’s check. The nearest post office is the Flamingo Post Office at 12590 Pines Boulevard, a short drive west, with its window open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

City Hall sits inside City Center, the block the city bounds by Pines Boulevard on the north, Palm Avenue on the east and Washington Street on the south, east of Hiatus Road.

Before you leave, walk over to Memorial Park, which shares the City Hall address at 601 City Center Way. Under the green pavilion stands the city’s 9/11 Memorial, built around a steel girder from the World Trade Center that New York gave Pembroke Pines in 2005, after Commissioner Angelo Castillo reached out to Mayor Michael Bloomberg for a piece of the towers. Local sculptors made the two pieces around it, Benoit Menasche’s white Italian marble showing pain, disbelief, grief and patriotism, and Felix Gonzalez’s firefighter and child in hand-hewn steel. The Veterans Memorial beside it is a fifteen-foot black granite obelisk carrying the seals of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines, circled by bricks engraved with the names of local veterans.

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

In Broward, deeds are recorded by the county itself, not the Clerk of Courts. The Recording Office of the Records, Taxes and Treasury Division is in Room 114 of the Broward County Governmental Center, 115 South Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale, open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 954-831-4000 and [email protected]. Broward publishes only that one recording counter, with no branch in Pembroke Pines, so a deed recorded in person means a trip downtown.

You will not need to go. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which appears under its ICE Mortgage Technology name on Broward’s own list of approved e-recording services. That matters here right now. The county’s status page, updated September 22, 2026, showed it was still working through mailed and courier documents received August 4. An e-recorded deed never joins that pile.

The recording fee Broward posts is $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 Marty Kiar, the Broward County Property Appraiser, whose office is in the same Governmental Center as the Recording Office, in Room 111. The exemptions desk answers at 954-357-6830, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can file online at bcpa.net, and for 2027 the window runs from March 3, 2026 to March 1, 2027. The Property Appraiser asks for a Florida driver license when you file.

If you would rather sit down with a person, the Property Appraiser’s staff come to Pembroke Pines several times a month, including a session at City Hall on the second Tuesday of each month through December. Appointments are at web.bcpa.net/ExemptionsExpress, and Michael Clark at the Property Appraiser’s office coordinates the sessions, at 954-357-5579 and [email protected].

• Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., Southwest Regional Library, 16835 Sheridan Street
• Monday, November 2, 2026, 9 to 11 a.m., Southwest Focal Point Senior Center, 301 NW 103rd Avenue
• Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 9 to 11 a.m., Pembroke Pines City Hall, 601 City Center Way
• Monday, November 16, 2026, 10 a.m. to noon, the lobby of the Pembroke Pines YMCA, 501 SW 172nd Avenue
• Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., South Regional/Broward College Library, 7300 Pines Boulevard
• Monday, December 7, 2026, 9 to 11 a.m., Southwest Focal Point Senior Center, 301 NW 103rd Avenue
• Monday, December 7, 2026, 10 a.m. to noon, the lobby of the Pembroke Pines YMCA, 501 SW 172nd Avenue
• Tuesday, December 8, 2026, 9 to 11 a.m., Pembroke Pines City Hall, 601 City Center Way

The Broward Property Appraiser answers the lady bird question in its own FAQ. An owner who deeds the future interest in the home to children or others and keeps a life estate keeps the homestead exemption and the existing Save Our Homes value. A lady bird deed keeps that life estate for you. After your death the exemption ends, the home is reassessed at market value the next year, and a family member who moves in files a new homestead application.

If your home is going into a trust instead of a lady bird deed, bring a notarized certificate of trust. The Property Appraiser asks for one before it will keep the exemption on a trust-owned home.

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 Broward 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. We prepare and record the rest.

The Department of Health office closest to Pembroke Pines for certified death certificates is the South Regional Health Center, 4105 Pembroke Road in Hollywood, at 954-467-4413. The office is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and closes at 3 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month. Each certified copy is $15.

We send you the recorded deed as soon as Broward returns it. The deed also shows up in Broward’s official records search, where you can look it up by your name and open the recorded image. Print it at home for the file drawer, or send it from your phone to the South Regional/Broward College Library at 7300 Pines Boulevard and collect the printout there. The library is one of the county branches with wireless print pick-up, a short drive east of City Hall along Pines Boulevard.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Recording Office charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify.

Then take two minutes to sign up for Broward’s free Recording Notification Service. The service emails you whenever a document is recorded under a name or parcel number you are watching, which is the simplest protection there is against someone recording a false deed on your house.

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 Broward Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a veteran with a service-connected disability of at least 10 percent, and a full exemption on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability. Each is proved with a certificate or letter from the VA, and surviving spouses of qualifying veterans can keep some of these exemptions.

Broward County Veterans Services helps with the paperwork. The service location nearest Pembroke Pines is the South Regional Courthouse, 3550 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, and visits at every location are by appointment at 954-357-6622. The same call starts the county’s free Parks Passport for veterans with a service-related disability, which covers the weekend and holiday entrance fee at Broward County parks for five years.

If you want to honor a veteran in your family, the city sells engraved bricks for the walkway at the Veterans Memorial beside City Hall, through the Recreation and Cultural Arts Department at 954-743-1889.

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 when you file for homestead. 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 state driver license office is here in Pembroke Pines, at 8001 Pembroke Road, 954-497-1570, open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.