Estate Planning Attorney for Venice, 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 Venice, on Venice Island or in Wellen Park. If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store at 4107 South Tamiami Trail lists notary service and posts separate notary hours, so call (941) 218-4988 before you go. A second UPS Store, in the Venice Commons Shopping Center at 1435 East Venice Avenue, Suite 104, also lists notary service, at (941) 484-1933.

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 South County Courthouse sits beside the R.L. Anderson Administration Center at 4000 South Tamiami Trail, about three minutes on foot, and that one campus holds three of the offices this page mentions. The Property Appraiser’s Venice office is in Room 1100 of the Anderson Center, and the Department of Health’s Venice Vital Records office is on its second floor. If your errand at the Clerk comes with a homestead question, you can walk it across the lot the same morning.

For a break, the Venice Area Audubon Rookery Park at 4006 South Tamiami Trail is about three minutes on foot, just south of the county buildings. The Venice Area Audubon Society describes it as an active roosting and breeding site for wading birds and a Purple Martin colony, open every day of the year from 6 a.m. to dusk. The birds roost on an island in the middle of the pond, alligators patrol the water and keep predators off the island, and a path of about half a mile circles it, with benches in a shaded pavilion. Along U.S. 41 to the north, Truist at 4101 South Tamiami Trail is about eleven minutes on foot and Chase at 4203 South Tamiami Trail about thirteen, which helps if you bank at either one and need a cashier’s check. Publix at 4173 South Tamiami Trail is about fifteen minutes away, and Italiano’s Pasta and Pizza Parlor, a family restaurant at 4191 South Tamiami Trail, near Jacaranda Boulevard, serves lunch about seventeen minutes on foot from the courthouse.

The nearest post office is in downtown Venice, a short drive north, at 350 West Venice Avenue, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday until 2 p.m., at 941-483-4195. The William H. Jervey Jr. Venice Library at 300 Nokomis Avenue South is about eleven minutes on foot from it, so one trip downtown covers both stamps and printing.

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.

Venice homeowners do not have to drive to Sarasota to record a deed. Deeds in Sarasota County are recorded by Karen E. Rushing, the Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller, who also serves as the County Recorder, and her full-service Venice branch records deeds too. The branch is on the first floor of the South County Courthouse at 4004 South Tamiami Trail, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with free parking in the lots around the building, which the Twelfth Judicial Circuit confirms on its courthouse page. 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.

You will not need to go to the courthouse at all. 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, and his office keeps a Venice branch in Room 1100 of the R.L. Anderson Administration Center, 4000 South Tamiami Trail, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The main line is 941-861-8200, and the office takes exemption documents by email at [email protected]. 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.

The same FAQ warns about a different move that looks similar. Adding a child to the deed as a co-owner can cost part or all of the Save Our Homes cap, depending on how the deed holds title and whether the new owner files for homestead. 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.

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 Venice Vital Records office, on the second floor of the R.L. Anderson Administration Center at 4000 South Tamiami Trail, at 941-861-3528. The Venice office’s own page lists Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed from noon to 12:30, so call before you go. The Sarasota office at 2200 Ringling Boulevard is open weekdays. 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 County’s Official Records go back to 1921 on microfilm, and the Clerk invites you to inspect records in person at the Venice office as well as in Sarasota. Customer Services and Public Access Records share the first floor of the South County Courthouse.

For a paper copy for the file drawer, print it at home or at a county library. 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 collect it at the desk. The Frances T. Bourne Jacaranda Library, 4143 Woodmere Park Boulevard, is the closest to the courthouse, about 22 minutes on foot or a short drive, open Monday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday until 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday until 5 p.m. The UPS Store at 4107 South Tamiami Trail, about twelve minutes on foot north of the courthouse, also lists printing among its services and answers at (941) 218-4988. If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify the document, and mailed or phoned copy requests take 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 Cathy and Catherine, and dropping spaces and apostrophes, so OConnell rather than O’Connell. 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 keeps a Venice office in Suite 2040 of the R.L. Anderson Administration Center, 4000 South Tamiami Trail, the same campus as the courthouse and the Property Appraiser’s Venice branch. Visits are by appointment only, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 941-861-3047 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 its Venice office is at 4000 South Tamiami Trail, on the Anderson Center campus beside the courthouse, 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. On one campus in Venice you can record a deed, file for homestead, see a veterans counselor, order a death certificate and change the name on your license.