Estate Planning Attorney for Sebring, 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 Sebring, Sun ’n Lake or Lake Placid. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store at 926 Sebring Square lists notary service, and its page asks you to check that the notary is in before you go, at (863) 658-2533. The Clerk’s own recording fee schedule also lists a $5 notary fee, so if you are at the Government Center anyway, ask the Recording Division whether a notary is available that day.

The Highlands Clerk will not record a deed unless each witness’s name is printed, typed or stamped directly beneath the witness’s signature and each witness’s post office address appears on the deed. That rule has applied since January 1, 2024, and a deed that misses it comes back unrecorded. When we draft your deed, the witness lines are laid out for it.

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

Deeds in Highlands County are recorded by the Official Records Division of Jerome N. Kaszubowski, the Clerk of Circuit Court and Comptroller, and the office is right in Sebring. Official Records is on the second floor of the Highlands County Government Center at 590 South Commerce Avenue, open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Recording Division answers at (863) 402-6590 and by email at [email protected]. Mr. Kaszubowski was a deputy clerk in Highlands for more than 30 years before he was elected in 2020.

You will not need to climb those stairs. 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 recording process with no risk of it getting lost, and once the deed is recorded an image carrying the Clerk’s stamp is available right away. A deed sent by mail comes back only if you include a self-addressed stamped envelope, because the Clerk does not supply return postage. 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 Raymond McIntyre, the Highlands County Property Appraiser, whose office is at 560 South Commerce Avenue, in the Government Center next door to Official Records and about a minute on foot. The office is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Exemptions Department answers at (863) 402-6678 and by email at [email protected].

Highlands has no online homestead filing, which is worth knowing before you plan the trip. The Property Appraiser says new applications for every exemption must be made in person, between January 1 and March 1 of the year after you buy, at the Sebring office or at filing sessions the office holds in Avon Park and Lake Placid, whose times are published each January in the local paper. When several owners apply, only one needs to come in, carrying a copy of each other applicant’s driver license or ID card. Bring your driver license, vehicle registration and voter registration, since the office asks whether they all show the homestead address.

The Property Appraiser also warns that a sale ends the Save Our Homes cap and resets the home to full market value the next year. A lady bird deed is not a sale, but ask us whether your new deed needs anything from 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 Highlands 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 Highlands County issues certified death certificates at 7205 South George Boulevard in Sebring, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 863-382-7215. The first copy costs $10 and each extra copy of the same record bought at the same time costs $8. The office holds Florida death records from 2009 on, takes cash, money order, cashier’s check, Visa or Mastercard in person, and releases the cause of death only to family or someone with a documented interest in the estate. The Veteran Services Office is in the same parking lot, which saves a veteran’s family a second trip. 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 and see the book and page. The online index starts in 1981, and older records can be looked up in person at the Official Records Division in the Government Center.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home, or take it to The UPS Store at 926 Sebring Square, a short drive north of downtown, which lists printing among its services and answers at (863) 658-2533. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify it.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. You register with your email and a code the service sends you, then enter the names you want watched, and the system checks every new Highlands recording against them each day and alerts you when it finds a match. The Clerk’s notice puts it plainly, that there is no reason to pay a private company for this when the county does it for free. Watching the records for your name is the simplest guard there is against someone recording a false deed on your house.

The county’s offices in Sebring share one campus on South Commerce Avenue. The original Courthouse at 430 South Commerce holds the courts and the Clerk’s court offices, and the Government Center, completed in December 1997, holds the Property Appraiser, the Tax Collector and the Clerk’s Official Records, so the deed, the homestead question and a driver license update can all be handled in one trip.

For hot coffee, Sweetwater Coffee Company at 112 North Ridgewood Drive, about 10 minutes on foot, roasts its own coffee and serves boba teas and pastries, open every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., at (863) 304-8975. Closer still, Strangely Warmed Coffee Roasters at 161 South Commerce Avenue, Suite E, with its entrance on Mango Street, is about 8 minutes on foot and is listed with weekday hours of 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and Saturday mornings from 9 to noon, at 863-273-9404.

Sweetwater sits on one of the spokes of Circle Park, about 10 minutes on foot from the Government Center. Sebring calls itself the City on the Circle. George E. Sebring, a pottery manufacturer from Ohio, founded the town in 1912 around that circle, and the state chartered the city a year later.

First Southern Bank has a downtown branch at 205 West Center Avenue, about 13 minutes on foot, which helps if you bank there and need a cashier’s check. The Sebring Post Office at 518 North Ridgewood Drive is about 17 minutes on foot, with its counter open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption. The Highlands Property Appraiser lists a full exemption on the homestead for an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, which can carry over to a surviving spouse, and a discount for a partially disabled veteran whose permanent disability is combat related, equal to the disability percentage the VA assigns. A first filing needs a certificate from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the combat-related discount asks for a VA benefit statement and a DD214.

The Highlands County Veteran Services Office helps with those papers, at 7209 South George Boulevard in Sebring, in the Health Department parking lot off U.S. 27 south of Lake Jackson. The office answers at (863) 402-6623 and [email protected], and takes appointment requests by email.

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 too, because the Property Appraiser asks for it 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, and only after the Social Security Administration has updated your name, allowing 24 to 48 hours after that. In Sebring, the Tax Collector’s service center at 540 South Commerce Avenue, in the same Government Center, handles driver licenses Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 863-402-6685.