Estate Planning Attorney for Spring Hill, 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. The Clerk’s Spring Hill office at 7405 Forest Oaks Boulevard lists notary service among its counter services, which is convenient because the same counter handles recording and copies.

The Hernando Clerk publishes its rules for a recorded deed. The first page needs a three-inch blank square in the top right corner and each later page a one-inch by three-inch space, the deed carries the mailing addresses of the grantor and grantee and the name and address of whoever prepared it, each signer and witness has a printed name below the signature, and a deed sent by mail needs a self-addressed stamped return envelope addressed to the Recording Division, Room 165. When we draft your deed, those are handled.

If you do come to Forest Oaks Boulevard, the Clerk, the Property Appraiser and the Department of Health can be done in one visit on foot, because the whole row is a 4 minute walk. For breakfast or lunch, Up 4 Breakfast in Lakewood Plaza, 4373 Commercial Way, about 8 minutes on foot from the Clerk, serves from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day, at 352-686-4186. The restaurant describes its spot as the corner of U.S. 19 and Forest Oaks Boulevard, in the Publix and Target shopping center behind Wells Fargo. That Wells Fargo branch is at 4319 Commercial Way, about 9 minutes on foot, and a PNC branch is about 3 minutes on foot from the Clerk at 7205 Forest Oaks Boulevard, if you bank at either one. The main Spring Hill post office at 8501 Philatelic Drive is a short drive away, with its retail window open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at 352-683-3780. The Plaza post office at 7341 Spring Hill Drive is also a drive, open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. For a quiet walk afterward, the Weekiwachee Preserve at 2345 Osowaw Boulevard covers 11,206 acres along the Weeki Wachee River and opens 30 minutes before sunrise.

For a coffee to go, Dunkin’ has a shop on the same stretch of Commercial Way at 4471 Commercial Way, about 13 minutes on foot from the Clerk.

For something to remember the day by, Weeki Wachee Springs State Park in nearby Weeki Wachee has staged live mermaid shows since 1947, now in a 400-seat theater set below the surface of the spring. The park is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and admission is $13 for adults.

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

In Hernando County, deeds are recorded by the Recording Division of the Clerk of Circuit Court and Comptroller, Doug Chorvat Jr. Spring Hill is not a city with its own government, so the main Recording Division sits in the county seat, in Room 165 of the Hernando County Courthouse at 20 North Main Street in Brooksville, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Recording Division answers at (352) 540-6768, and the Clerk’s main line is 352-754-4201.

Spring Hill residents do not have to drive to Brooksville. The Clerk keeps a Spring Hill office at 7405 Forest Oaks Boulevard, in the Forest Oaks Government Center, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the Clerk lists recording and copies of Official Records among the services offered there. Mail for the Clerk still goes to the Brooksville courthouse.

You will not need to go to either office. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which the Clerk names as one of its four e-recording partners. The Clerk itself says e-recording shortens the recording gap and saves mailing. The posted recording fee is $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed costs $18.50 to record, and the Clerk posts a $0.70 minimum in documentary stamp tax on every deed.

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 Randy Mazourek, the Hernando County Property Appraiser. The main office is at 201 Howell Avenue, Suite 300, in Brooksville, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., at (352) 754-4190 and [email protected]. Spring Hill has its own Westside Office at 7525 Forest Oaks Boulevard, about 4 minutes on foot from the Clerk’s Spring Hill office, and the Property Appraiser accepts homestead applications in person at any of its offices.

You must own the home and live in it as your permanent residence on January 1. The Property Appraiser is taking applications now for the 2027 tax year, and the deadline is March 1, 2027. You can file online, by mail, or in person.

The Property Appraiser says a sale removes the existing exemption and the Save Our Homes cap and requires a new application. A lady bird deed is not a sale, but ask the office whether it wants a new application after one is recorded, so the exemption carries over without a gap.

• The Property Appraiser’s offices close on Wednesday, November 11, 2026.
• The Property Appraiser’s offices close on Thursday and Friday, November 26 and 27, 2026.

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 Hernando 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. Certified death certificates are issued in Spring Hill itself, by the Department of Health in Hernando County at 7551 Forest Oaks Boulevard, about 4 minutes on foot from the Clerk’s Spring Hill office and a minute from the Property Appraiser’s Westside Office. Vital Statistics is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 352-540-6800, and charges $10 a copy. The office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on, and the cause of death is released only to close family or someone who shows an interest in the estate, with a photo ID. 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 look it up by your name and open the recorded image. Hernando’s online records and images run from 1983 to the present.

For a paper copy, print it at home, or ask at the Clerk’s Spring Hill office on Forest Oaks Boulevard, which makes copies of Official Records. The Clerk charges $1 a page for a copy, and a certified copy for a bank or title company costs that plus $2 to certify. A credit card payment carries a 3.5% transaction fee.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. Hernando emails you within 24 hours whenever a deed, mortgage or other land record is recorded with your registered name on it, and the email comes from “Hernando Clerk Fraud Alert.” If your home is in a trust, register the trust’s name as a business name. The Clerk tells anyone who suspects fraud to call the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office at 352-754-6830.

For a printed copy you can take home, the Hernando County Public Library prints black and white pages for 10 cents and color for 50 cents, and you can send a document from your phone to its printers. The Spring Hill Branch at 9220 Spring Hill Drive, a short drive from Forest Oaks Boulevard, is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday from noon to 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 352-754-4043.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption, and the Hernando Property Appraiser lists what each one needs. A veteran with a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more receives a $5,000 exemption, proved with VA letter 27-125 stating the percentage. An honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability receives a full exemption on the homestead, proved with VA letter 27-333, and the Property Appraiser adds that the letter must show the homestead address. A veteran 65 or older with a combat-related disability receives a discount on the tax equal to the combat-related percentage, filed on form DR-501DV. Every one of these requires that you already receive the homestead exemption.

Hernando County Veteran Services is in Brooksville at 621 W. Jefferson St., at (352) 754-4033. Its accredited service officers help with claims, applications and appeals at no charge, and a meeting is set up through the appointment form on the county’s Veteran Services page.

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 Hernando County, licenses are issued by the Tax Collector, and its Spring Hill office is on the same road as the Clerk, in the Westside Branch Center at 7701 Forest Oaks Blvd, about 3 minutes on foot. The office handles driver licenses weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for Hernando residents, opening at 9 a.m. on the third Wednesday of each month. The Spring Hill office has no public phone, so questions go by email to [email protected], or to the main office in Brooksville at (352) 754-4180.