Estate Planning Attorney for Punta Gorda, 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 Punta Gorda Isles, Burnt Store or Port Charlotte. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store at 1133 Bal Harbor Boulevard lists notary service, and its page asks you to check that the notary is in before you go, at (941) 575-7400. The Clerk’s recording fee schedule also lists a $10 notary fee, so if you are at the Justice Center anyway, ask the Recording department whether a notary is available that day.

The Charlotte Clerk publishes its own checklist for a deed, and your deed is drafted to it. The sale price or consideration is stated, the body is dated, the new owner’s mailing address and the name and address of the person who prepared the deed appear on it, the property is described with its parcel identification number, and each of the two witnesses prints a name and a post office address under the signature. The Clerk also asks that nothing on the deed be highlighted, because color scans as solid black on the recorded image.

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

Deeds in Charlotte County are recorded by the Official Records Division of Roger D. Eaton, the Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller, and the division keeps an office in downtown Punta Gorda at the Charlotte County Justice Center, 350 East Marion Avenue, open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. A second Official Records office is at the Murdock Administration Building, 18500 Murdock Circle in Port Charlotte. The Recording department answers at (941) 637-2245 and by email at [email protected].

You will not need to go to the Justice Center at all. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of e-recording vendors. The Clerk describes e-recording as a way to track a document through the whole process with no risk of it being lost, and says an image carrying the Clerk’s stamp is available as soon as the document records. A mailed deed needs a self-addressed stamped envelope to come back. The posted recording fee is $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed records for $18.50, plus $1 for each name past the fourth.

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 Paul L. Polk, the Charlotte County Property Appraiser, and his office keeps a Punta Gorda branch at the South County Annex, 410 Taylor Street, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed for lunch from noon to 1. The Records department, which handles exemptions, answers at 941-743-1593 and by email at [email protected]. You can file online, by mail, or in person, between January 1 and March 1, and the office starts taking early homestead applications for the following year on March 2.

Charlotte’s Property Appraiser points to a rule that makes recording matter. Florida law requires the deed to be recorded in Charlotte County’s official records before a homestead exemption can be granted, and the office asks you to bring your deed when you file. If the home is held in a trust, the office asks for a copy of the trust agreement or its Affidavit As To Terms of Trust. Ask us whether your lady bird deed needs anything more for the Property Appraiser, and we will check it 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 Charlotte 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 Charlotte County issues certified death certificates at its main office, 1100 Loveland Boulevard in Port Charlotte, a drive north across the Peace River, with Vital Statistics open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 941-624-7200. A copy costs $10, and the office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on. 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 search by name, by the Clerk’s file number or by book and page. The Clerk indexes names last name first with a comma, and indexes both the grantor and the grantee even when the names repeat, so searching under your own name finds both your old deed and the new one.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home, or take it to The UPS Store at 1133 Bal Harbor Boulevard, in Bal Harbor Plaza in Punta Gorda Isles, a short drive from downtown, which lists printing among its services and answers at (941) 575-7400. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk sells electronic certified copies online for a flat $9, emailed as an encrypted PDF from [email protected], or at the counter for $1 a page plus $2 to certify and a $4 service fee.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. You enter the name you want watched and your email, choose a person or a business name, and confirm through the email the Clerk sends with the subject “Charlotte Clerk Fraud Alert.” Whenever a document is recorded in Charlotte County under that name, the alert arrives within 24 hours with the Clerk’s file number, so you can look at the document yourself. The Clerk’s page notes that Florida ranks third in the nation for property and mortgage fraud. Watching the records for your name is the simplest guard there is against someone recording a false deed on your house.

Parking at the Justice Center is free, in front of the building on the west side, according to the circuit court’s page for the building. The Property Appraiser and the Tax Collector’s driver license office share the South County Annex at 410 Taylor Street, about 12 minutes on foot, so a deed question, a homestead question and a license update fit into one downtown morning.

For breakfast, 88 Keys inside The Wyvern Hotel at 101 East Retta Esplanade, about 7 minutes on foot, serves breakfast Wednesday through Friday from 7 to 10:30 a.m., with breakfast to go on Monday and Tuesday, at (941) 639-7700. For lunch, Toula’s at 119 West Marion Avenue, about 7 minutes away, serves gyros, pitas, falafel and breakfast plates, and Isabel & Annabel’s at 209 West Olympia Avenue, about 10 minutes on foot, serves lunch specials from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Saturday, at (941) 639-4086.

For a few quiet minutes after, Laishley Park at 100 Nesbit Street sits on the harbor about 7 minutes on foot from the Justice Center. The city’s own history explains why the water is still open to everyone here. When Isaac Trabue had the town laid out in 1884 along the south shore of the Peace River, every waterfront block was set aside as a park, and those parks are now joined by Harborwalk, a public promenade about two and a half miles long.

Pinnacle Bank has a branch at 125 Nesbit Street, about 4 minutes on foot, and Wells Fargo is at 314 Taylor Street, about 10 minutes away, which helps if you bank at either one and need a cashier’s check. The Punta Gorda Post Office at 130 East Marion Avenue, about 5 minutes on foot, keeps its counter open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption. The Charlotte Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a veteran with a wartime disability of 10 percent or more, proved by the Veterans Administration, which can pass to a surviving spouse under certain conditions, and a full exemption on the homestead for a veteran honorably discharged with a service-connected total and permanent disability, confirmed by the VA.

Charlotte County Veteran Services helps with that paperwork at no cost, and in-person visits are by appointment only, at 941.764.5579. The main office is at 21500 Gibralter Drive in Port Charlotte, and a West County office is at 6868 San Casa Drive, Unit 12, in Englewood.

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, and only after the Social Security Administration has updated your name, allowing 24 to 48 hours after that. In Punta Gorda, the Tax Collector’s service center at 410 Taylor Street handles driver licenses Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 941-743-1350, and recommends an appointment for every transaction.