Estate Planning Attorney for Sarasota, 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. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store at 242 South Washington Boulevard lists notary service and posts its own notary hours, so call (941) 954-4575 before you go.

The Sarasota Clerk publishes its recording checklist, and your deed is drafted to it. The first page leaves a blank 3 by 3 inch square in the upper right corner for the Clerk’s stamp, and each later page a 1 by 3 inch space. The deed carries the printed name and mailing address of the person who prepared it, of each person signing, of each witness and of the new owner, along with the notary’s commission number and expiration date. Photocopies are not accepted, and a deed that misses any requirement is returned unrecorded.

The building is worth a look while you are there. The county hired the New York architect Dwight James Baum in 1925 to design the courthouse, the same architect John and Mable Ringling chose for their home, Ca’ d’Zan, and the Clerk’s history of the building points to its Samuel Yellin ironwork, terrazzo floors, marble walls and tower as an exceptional example of the Mediterranean Revival style. Sarasota had broken away from Manatee County only in 1921, and today the Clerk is the one office left in the building.

If you do come downtown to the Clerk or the courthouse, the errands sit close together. OfKors Cafe, at 1989 Main Street on the corner of Main and Washington, is about a minute on foot and serves coffee, sandwiches, shakshuka and crepes every day from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Property Appraiser’s office at 2001 Adams Lane is about three minutes away, and Seacoast National Bank at 1950 Ringling Boulevard is three minutes on foot if you bank there and need a cashier’s check. Wells Fargo at 1819 Main Street is about five minutes away, and Truist at 1777 Main Street about seven.

The Sarasota post office at 1661 Ringling Boulevard, about ten minutes on foot, is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, at 941-331-4221. Payne Park, the city park whose tennis center sits at 2050 Adams Lane, is also about ten minutes away and a green place to sit before the drive home. For parking, the Clerk points to the Sarasota County garage at 2150 Ringling Boulevard, entered from School Avenue, about six minutes on foot, and notes that street parking has time limits while the garage does not. The Twelfth Judicial Circuit’s courthouse page adds that the garage at Ringling Boulevard and School Avenue is free, that most downtown streets have free two and three hour parking, and that the Judicial Parking lot at 2050 Ringling Boulevard takes credit and debit cards at its kiosks.

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

In Sarasota County, deeds are recorded by Karen E. Rushing, the Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller, who also serves as the County Recorder. The main office is in the Sarasota County Historic Courthouse at 2000 Main Street, on the southeast corner of Main Street and U.S. 301 (Washington Boulevard), open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Street-level access to the Clerk’s office is from the Ringling Boulevard entrance only. The Recording line is (941) 861-7400, option 3 and then option 2, and the Clerk takes written questions through its Ask a Question form. The Clerk also records deeds at its full-service Venice branch in the South County Courthouse.

You will not need to go downtown. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of e-recording vendors. The Clerk’s page says e-recording saves time and the cost of postage, courier and driving, and that a deed recorded in person or by mail comes back to you by first-class mail. The Clerk posts the recording fee as $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed records for $18.50, with no charge for the first four names indexed and $1 for each name after that.

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 Bill Furst, the Sarasota County Property Appraiser, whose main office is in the Terrace Building at 2001 Adams Lane, three minutes on foot from the Clerk, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 941-861-8200. The office takes exemption documents by email at [email protected] and has branch offices in Venice and at North Port City Hall. You must own and live in the home as your permanent residence on January 1, and the application is due by March 1. You can file online once the county records show the home in your name, and the office asks you to allow 30 days after a closing for that.

The Property Appraiser’s own FAQ answers the question most families ask about a deed like this. Keeping a life estate for yourself while granting the future interest to your children leaves your homestead exemption and your Save Our Homes cap unaffected, and those benefits do not pass to your children when you die. Ask us whether your deed needs anything more for the Appraiser, and we will check it with you.

For a home held in a trust, the Appraiser may ask for the recorded deed into the trust, a recorded Certificate of Trust, and the trust agreement if more is needed, and says homestead language or a life estate in the deed makes the review faster.

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 Sarasota 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 Department of Health in Sarasota County issues certified death certificates at its Office of Vital Records, 2200 Ringling Boulevard, about eight minutes on foot from the Clerk, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a half-hour lunch closing at noon, at 941-861-2810. A copy costs $10. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on, asks for a photo ID, and releases the cause of death 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 search, and the Clerk says recorded documents are viewable there the following business day, generally after 2 p.m. The online images run from 1990 to the present. Sarasota’s Official Records go back to 1921 on microfilm, and an older deed can be viewed in the Public Access Department, Room 103 on the first floor of the Historic Courthouse, or ordered by mail, phone or fax.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home or at the county’s Selby Library, 1331 1st Street, about 19 minutes on foot from the Clerk. Sarasota County libraries do not charge for printing, in black and white up to 30 pages a person a day, and you can send the file from home through the library’s online form or the ePRINTit app and pick it up at the desk. Selby is open Monday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday until 5 p.m. The UPS Store at 242 South Washington Boulevard, on the same road as the Clerk’s office, also lists printing among its services and answers at (941) 954-4575. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify the document, and the Public Access Department completes mailed or phoned copy requests in about three business days.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert service, which the Property Appraiser also recommends on its home page. The Clerk sends an email within 24 hours whenever a document is recorded in Sarasota County under a name you register, and you can register as many names as you like. The Clerk suggests registering every version of a name, both Dave and David, and dropping hyphens and apostrophes, so JohnsonSmith rather than Johnson-Smith. Watching the records for your name is the simplest guard 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 Sarasota County Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a Florida resident disabled at least 10 percent in war or by a service-connected disability, a full exemption on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, and, for a veteran 65 or older with a combat-related permanent disability, a discount on the homestead taxes equal to the VA disability percentage. The Appraiser notes that some of these benefits can carry over to a surviving spouse.

Sarasota County Veterans Services helps with the paperwork at 2200 Ringling Boulevard, Suite 125, about eight minutes on foot from the Clerk and in the same building as the Department of Health’s Office of Vital Records. The office sees veterans by appointment only, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 941-861-8387 (941-861-VETS) or [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. 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 Sarasota County the Tax Collector runs the driver license offices, and the downtown office at 101 South Washington Boulevard is about four minutes on foot from the Clerk, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 941-861-8300, option 2. The Tax Collector recommends booking an appointment online and also serves Sarasota County residents who walk in.