Estate Planning Attorney for The Villages, 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 lanai. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store #4141 at 1576 Bella Cruz Drive lists notary service seven days a week at (352) 753-8000. Call ahead to confirm a notary is in.

The Sumter Clerk publishes its own recording checklist, and your deed is drafted to it. Each page needs a blank three-inch square in the top right corner for the Clerk’s label. The deed carries the mailing addresses of the people signing and receiving, a prepared-by line with the preparer’s name and address, and each witness’s printed name and post office address, which Florida has required since January 1, 2024. The Clerk also asks for the price or consideration on the deed or in a cover letter.

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

The Villages reaches into three counties, so the first step is the county line under your house. The Census Bureau places The Villages in Sumter and Marion Counties, and the oldest section sits inside the Town of Lady Lake in Lake County, which The Villages’ own district government runs as the Lady Lake/Lake County district (Orange Blossom Gardens, Silver Lake, Del Mar, Valle Verde and six other villages). A deed records in the county where the home sits, whatever the mailing address says. Your property tax bill names the county, and we confirm it from the parcel before we draft anything.

This page follows Sumter County, the county that keeps a Clerk’s office and a Health Department office in The Villages. Sumter deeds are recorded by the Official Records department of Erin C. Munz, the Sumter County Clerk of Court and Comptroller, in its own building at 316 East Anderson Avenue in Bushnell, open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Official Records answers at (352) 569-6600. Recording mail goes to Post Office Box 2587, Bushnell, FL 33513, and overnight packages go to the courthouse at 215 East McCollum Avenue, Room 190.

The Clerk also keeps a Villages Annex at 8033 East CR-466, near the corner of Morse Boulevard and CR-466, open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at (352) 689-4625. The Clerk lists the Annex as offering limited services and does not publish which ones, so call before you carry a deed there.

You will not need to make either trip. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Sumter Clerk’s own list of accepted e-recording vendors. 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 $1 more for each name past the fourth. A home on the Marion side records with the Marion County Clerk, whose Official Records office is in the Clerk’s Annex Building at 19 North Pine Avenue in Ocala, and a home in the Lake County villages records with the Lake County Clerk.

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 the Sumter County Property Appraiser, whose main office is at 218 East McCollum Avenue in Bushnell, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 352-569-6800. Closer to home, the Property Appraiser keeps a Wildwood office at 7375 Powell Road, in the Brownwood area of The Villages, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed for lunch from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Exemption questions go to Alicia Kelly at [email protected], and questions about a deed or title go to Jessica Chancey at [email protected].

You must own the home and make it your permanent home on January 1, and the application is due March 1. You can file online. A first-time applicant gives a Social Security number and should have the deed at hand. If you moved from another Florida homestead, the Property Appraiser asks for Form DR-501T to carry your Save Our Homes difference to the new house. A home on the Marion or Lake side files with that county’s Property Appraiser instead.

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 Sumter 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 Sumter County issues certified death certificates at its Villages office, 8015 East C-466, next door to the Clerk’s Annex. Vital statistics are served weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the office closes for lunch from noon to 1 p.m. The phone is 352-689-4675, and each certified copy costs $12, with or without the cause of death. 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.

A surviving spouse can also claim Sumter’s $5,000 widow’s or widower’s exemption, and the Property Appraiser notes that a first-time filer may be asked to file a death certificate with the Clerk. 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 Sumter Clerk’s official records search. Sumter indexes names last name first with no commas, as in Smith John A, so search that way. The Clerk is running every image recorded before April 1, 2024 through a new redaction system, and an older deed can show “Image unavailable for viewing” until it clears. Email [email protected] with the instrument number and the Clerk adds it to the queue, usually within a day.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home, or ask The UPS Store #4141 at 1576 Bella Cruz Drive, a short drive north near Spanish Springs, which lists printing among its services at (352) 753-8000. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Sumter Clerk charges $1 a page for the copy and $2 for the certification.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert, or call the hotline at 1-800-728-3858. You choose the names to watch and whether an alert comes by email or by a telephone call, and the service tells you when a document with that name is recorded in Sumter County. The Clerk notes that property fraud often targets older owners and owners who spend large parts of the year out of town. The Sumter alert covers only Sumter records, so a home on the Marion or Lake side needs that county’s own alert.

Some families come to the Clerk’s Villages Annex for another errand and want to know what is close. The Department of Health’s Villages office, which issues birth and death certificates, is next door at 8015 East C-466, about 2 minutes on foot.

Lake Sumter Landing Market Square, at 1000 Lake Sumter Landing, is about a mile south of the Annex, a short drive or a golf cart ride. The square is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, with a boardwalk on the lake and free live music each night. City Fire has a restaurant on the square at 1018 Canal Street, and TooJay’s Deli, Bakery and Restaurant at 1129 Canal Street serves breakfast through dinner from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

Seacoast National Bank has a Lake Sumter Landing branch at 1050 Lake Sumter Landing, about 10 minutes on foot by the same routing, which helps if you bank there and need a cashier’s check. The nearest post office is a drive north, the La Plaza Grande Post Office at 4 LaGrande Boulevard in Spanish Springs, open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, at (352) 753-3888.

A disabled veteran may qualify for more than the basic homestead exemption, and the proof is a letter or certificate from the U.S. government or the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Sumter Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for a veteran disabled at least 10 percent in war or by service-connected misfortune, a property tax discount for an honorably discharged veteran 65 or older whose permanent disability is combat related, equal to the disability percentage, and a full exemption on the homestead of an honorably discharged veteran with a service-connected total and permanent disability, which can pass to a surviving spouse.

Sumter County Veteran Services helps with those claims at no charge, at the Villages Sumter County Service Center, 7375 Powell Road in Wildwood, the same building as the Property Appraiser’s Wildwood office. The office sees veterans by appointment only, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 352-689-4400.

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 at a local office, and only after the Social Security Administration has updated your name, allowing 24 to 48 hours after that. The Sumter Tax Collector has a driver license office in the same building as the Clerk’s Villages Annex, at 8033 East County Road 466, Suite B, with driver license service weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Every service there is by appointment, at 352-689-4645. The Tax Collector’s Wildwood office at 7375 Powell Road, Room 135, answers at 352-689-4540.