Estate Planning Attorney for Port St. Lucie, 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 near the annex. The UPS Store at 1391 NW Saint Lucie West Boulevard lists notary service and is open seven days a week, which helps when family can only come on a Saturday or Sunday. iTHINK Financial’s St. Lucie West branch, 2100 NW Courtyard Circle, about 22 minutes on foot, also lists a notary, with lobby hours of 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Thursday and until 6 p.m. on Friday, so call ahead if you are not a member there.

If you plan to record a deed yourself, the St. Lucie Clerk checks for a few things first. The present owners sign, two witnesses watch the owner sign, the notary’s seal and commission expiration date appear on the page, and the deed carries the addresses of both the owner and the person receiving the home. When we draft it, those are handled.

St. Lucie West is laid out for cars, so plan on driving between stops. Bank of America at 1601 NW Saint Lucie West Boulevard, with a drive-through ATM, is the one errand that is a five-minute walk from the annex. For a hot coffee before or after, Panera Bread at 1707 NW Saint Lucie West Boulevard is about 13 minutes on foot. Publix at 1537 NW Saint Lucie West Boulevard, about 12 minutes on foot, has a deli if the morning runs long. The post office at 290 NW Peacock Boulevard, for certified mail, is about 18 minutes on foot and an easy drive, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

For a quiet hour after, McChesney Park at 1585 SW Cashmere Boulevard is a short drive south, open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. The city opened the park in 1995, and its 24.5 acres hold a lake for fishing, a fenced playground, a dog park with separate fenced areas for small, medium and large dogs, and restrooms.

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

A Port St. Lucie owner might expect to record a deed at the Clerk’s building on Country Club Drive. The South County Annex at 250 NW Country Club Drive handles marriage licenses, passports, traffic and small claims, but it does not record deeds. Recording happens only at the Clerk’s Main Office in Fort Pierce, in the Recording Department on the 4th floor of 201 South Indian River Drive, open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Clerk’s general line is 772-462-6900, and e-recording questions go to 772-462-6928.

If you do visit the annex for another errand, parking is free in the open lot directly in front of the building’s entrance, as the Nineteenth Circuit’s courthouse page describes it.

You will not need to make that drive. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the St. Lucie Clerk’s own list of e-recording services. A deed sent by mail has to travel to a post office box in Fort Pierce with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for its return, and an e-recorded deed skips both trips. The Clerk posts recording at $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed costs $18.50 to record, plus documentary stamps where they apply.

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 Michelle Franklin, the St. Lucie County Property Appraiser. The Property Appraiser’s main office is in Fort Pierce at 2300 Virginia Avenue, and there is a Saint Lucie West Office right in the annex building at 250 NW Country Club Drive, with appointments through a QLess kiosk. Both offices answer at 772-462-1000 and [email protected], and the exemptions line for veteran and first responder questions is 772-462-1021.

The filing deadline is March 1, and you can file online at apps.paslc.gov/homestead. The Property Appraiser says homestead reduces taxable value by up to $51,411. For owners 65 and older, the additional senior exemption requires prior-year household income of no more than $38,686.

The Property Appraiser also warns that a change in title, such as conveying into a trust or adding a spouse, requires a new application, and asks for a copy of the entire trust when a home is titled in one. A lady bird deed changes the title too, so we tell you whether yours needs a fresh application, and the Saint Lucie West Office can confirm it while you are in the building.

Property tax bills go out on or about November 1. The Tax Collector gives a 4 percent discount for paying in November, with offices in Port St. Lucie at 1664 SE Walton Road and at 10264 SW Village Parkway in Tradition, and the main line is 772-462-1650.

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 St. Lucie 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 St. Lucie Clerk asks for the same certified death certificate when a married couple owns a home together and one spouse dies, and the Property Appraiser is then notified to show the survivor as the sole owner.

Certified death certificates come from the Department of Health’s main St. Lucie office, which is in Port St. Lucie at the Port St. Lucie Clinic, 5150 NW Milner Drive. Vital Statistics is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and closes for lunch from noon to 12:30 p.m. Each copy is $17, and a rush order adds $10. The office issues certificates for deaths from 2009 on, asks for photo ID, and gives the cause of death only to family or a legal representative. The clinic’s main line is 772-462-3800. 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, which covers official records from 1980 to the present, so you can look it up by your name. For a paper copy in the file drawer, The UPS Store in The Shoppes at St. Lucie West, 1391 NW Saint Lucie West Boulevard, makes copies and prints documents, about a twelve-minute walk from the annex. The Pruitt Campus Library, a public library the county shares with Indian River State College at 500 NW California Boulevard, Building J-1, is about 19 minutes on foot north of the annex and is open to anyone Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 772-336-6380. The library follows the college calendar, so its hours shrink in summer and during class breaks.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk sells certified official records online through Clerk E-Certify, so nobody has to go to Fort Pierce for that either.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. The service sends an email and a text within 24 hours when a document is recorded in your name, and the Clerk counted more than 18,000 subscribers as of July 1, 2026. If an alert ever shows a deed you did not sign, the Clerk’s page lists the Port St. Lucie Police Department at 772-871-5000 as the first call, and we can take it from there.

We copy the legal description from your last recorded deed, word for word, because that is what the title record already recognizes. If it does not match the lot, or a fence, pool or addition raises a question, a licensed surveyor can check it. Culpepper & Terpening, a civil engineering and surveying firm that has worked on the Treasure Coast for more than three decades, is north of the city in Fort Pierce at 2980 South 25th Street, 772-464-3537, and takes survey requests through a quote form on its website. Most deeds never need one.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption. The St. Lucie County Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected disability rating of at least 10 percent, proved the first time with a current letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the unremarried surviving spouse of a disabled veteran may also qualify if the couple had been married at least five years. An honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability may qualify for a full exemption on the homestead. Veteran questions go to the exemptions line at 772-462-1021.

St. Lucie County Veteran Services helps with the VA letter and the rest of the paperwork, free, and its Port St. Lucie office is in the Dorothy J. Conrad Building at 1664 SE Walton Road, Suite 205. Visits are by appointment at 772-337-5670, and the county counted 585 scheduled appointments across its two offices in August 2026 alone, so call early. The same office runs a free van to VA appointments at the Thomas H. Corey VA Medical Center in West Palm Beach, and one of its two pickup points is the annex at 250 NW Country Club Drive. Seats must be reserved at the same number.

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. In St. Lucie County the Tax Collector runs the driver license offices, and every person who needs service needs an appointment, made at tcslc.com or by calling 772-462-1650. The Tradition office at 10264 SW Village Parkway keeps the longest hours, with driver license service weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturdays by appointment from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The Walton Road office at 1664 SE Walton Road, in the same building as Veteran Services, offers driver license service weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., though the state lists its license services as limited, so confirm a name change when you book.