Estate Planning Attorney for Sanford, 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 your own kitchen table. Each witness prints a name and a post office address under the signature, and the Clerk’s own blank quit claim deed form has a line for each witness’s address. We draft yours with every line filled in.

If you would rather sign in person in Sanford, the Clerk offers notary service for signatures at $10 a signature, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Records Center, the Criminal Justice Center at 101 Eslinger Way and the Juvenile Justice Center at 190 Eslinger Way. The Clerk asks you to call ahead to be sure a notary is available, every signer has to be there with a current government photo ID, and the document cannot have any blanks. Bring your own two witnesses.

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

In Seminole County, deeds are recorded by the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, Grant Maloy, and the Official Records counter is not at the courthouse. The Civil Courthouse at 301 North Park Avenue has no customer counter at all. Official Records works out of the Clerk’s Records Center at 1750 East Lake Mary Boulevard in Sanford, open for official records from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The department answers at 407-665-4405 and takes email at [email protected]. The Clerk’s Casselberry branch at 376 Wilshire Boulevard offers some recording services as well.

You will not need to drive out to Lake Mary Boulevard. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which the Clerk lists by name among the vendors it uses for eRecording. The Clerk says an eRecorded document is typically recorded within 24 to 72 hours, and once it records, the image with the recording information can be pulled from the Clerk’s website right away. A deed sent on paper goes by mail or by hand with the recording fees, any documentary stamp tax and a self-addressed stamped envelope for its return.

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 David Johnson, the Seminole County Property Appraiser, whose office is on the first floor of the County Services Building at 1101 East First Street, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Customer service answers at 407-665-7506, and the exemptions department answers at 407-665-7512 and takes email at [email protected].

You can file for homestead online. The Property Appraiser’s deadline to file is March 1, and you must own the home and make it your permanent legal home on January 1. The office asks for a Florida driver license showing the home’s address and Social Security numbers for each owner applying and their spouses. After the first year, the Save Our Homes cap limits the rise in assessed value, and the office puts that cap at 2.7 percent for 2026.

Seminole County is unusually direct about title changes. The Property Appraiser writes that Florida law requires a new application when the title changes, and the first example it gives is putting your property into a trust or life estate. A lady bird deed reserves a life estate to you, so when we record yours, call the exemptions department at 407-665-7512 and ask whether it needs a new application. If it does, we help you file it. If your home is held in a trust, the office wants a copy of the trust for review.

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 Seminole 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 Seminole Clerk lists death certificates among the documents kept in the Official Records.

Certified death certificates come from the Florida Department of Health in Seminole County, at its main office at 400 West Airport Boulevard in Sanford, open for death certificates Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Vital Statistics answers at 407-665-3226. The county’s application form puts the fee at $10 for the first certified copy and $5 for each additional copy. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on, every request needs a copy of a photo ID, and the cause of death goes only to family or a legal representative. 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 Online, where you accept the user agreement and search by name. The online records reach back to August 8, 1913, and a PDF copy of any document can be downloaded or printed free of charge, which saves a trip to a print shop.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk sells an eCertified copy online for $1 a page plus a $5 eCertify fee per document, sent straight to your email. A paper certified copy costs $1 a page plus $2 for the certification, at any Clerk location or by mail with the book and page number and a prepaid envelope.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. You choose the names to watch, and when one is used in a recording, the alert gives you the Clerk’s instrument number and the official records book and page, with a link to view the document. The Clerk is plain about why this matters, because the Clerk must record every document that complies with Florida law and has no legal authority to refuse a properly prepared one. If you receive an alert about something you did not do, the Clerk says to contact local law enforcement or a lawyer. The Clerk’s forms page even carries a blank Complaint to Quiet Title for a forged deed.

The in-person errands a deed can bring, filing for homestead and updating a driver license, both happen in one building, the Seminole County Services Building at 1101 East First Street in downtown Sanford. Downtown Sanford is built of brick for a reason. The city’s own history records that in September 1887 a bakery on First Street caught fire, the blaze spread through the wooden buildings on the east side of town, and the town rebuilt in brick.

The Sanford Museum at 520 East First Street, about 6 minutes on foot, opened in 1957 as the Henry Shelton Sanford Memorial Library and Museum and holds the papers and library of the city’s founder. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and answers at 407-688-5198.

The Sanford Post Office at 401 East First Street, about 9 minutes on foot, is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, and it answers at 407-688-9487. If you need a cashier’s check and bank there, Truist’s Downtown Sanford branch is at 208 West First Street, about 14 minutes on foot. For lunch on the way, Raw Press Juice Co. at 108 South Park Avenue, about 12 minutes on foot, makes fresh juices and wraps, open Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on weekends from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Mondays, and it answers at 407-839-7617.

When you are done, Fort Mellon Park at 600 East First Street, about 9 minutes on foot, sits on Lake Monroe with a playground, a splash pad and eight shaded pavilions, and the city is finishing a new amphitheater and a Lake Carola seawall there. The park opens onto the Sanford RiverWalk, which the city began as a simple sidewalk along the lake in 1995 and has grown into a trail of nearly five miles.

The city’s downtown parking map shows free public lots and free on-street parking on most downtown streets unless a sign says otherwise. The same map warns that lots not marked on it are private, and a car left in a private space may be towed.

Without a car, SunRail stops at the Sanford station at 2720 West State Road 46, and the city runs a free trolley between that station and stops in downtown Sanford.

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 dated before January 1 of the year you apply. The Seminole Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a veteran with a service-connected disability of 10 to 100 percent, a full exemption on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a 100 percent total and permanent service-connected disability, and a combat-related disability discount for a veteran 65 or older. A surviving spouse can inherit the total and permanent exemption and the combat-related discount.

For a copy of the VA letter, the Property Appraiser points you to the VA at 1-800-827-1000 or the VA Orlando Claims Office at 407-648-6146, and completed applications can be emailed to [email protected].

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 home’s address 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. In Sanford the Seminole County Tax Collector offers driver license services, without testing, in the same County Services Building at 1101 East First Street, by appointment only. Driver license services run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, and the Tax Collector answers at 407-665-1000.