Estate Planning Attorney for Wellington, 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. Near Village Hall, The UPS Store #2128 at 11924 West Forest Hill Boulevard lists notary service during all of its open hours, weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., which helps when witnesses can only come on a weekend. Bring the complete, unsigned original and a government photo ID, along with your two witnesses, and call ahead.

If you are recording a deed yourself, the Clerk checks it against a posted list. Every deed notarized in Florida must show each witness’s name and address, the first page needs a blank three-inch square in the top right corner for the recording stamp, with a one-by-three-inch space on each page after, and a deed that affects real property needs a “prepared by” statement. A deed sent by mail needs a self-addressed stamped envelope, and payment by mail cannot be cash. When we draft your deed, those are handled.

If you have business at Village Hall, 12300 Forest Hill Boulevard, the Publix at 11950 Forest Hill Boulevard in the Town Square plaza, about 9 minutes on foot, opens at 7 a.m. every day and has a deli and a bakery. On Thursday evenings, Thursday Nights in Wellington brings food trucks and market vendors to the Wellington Amphitheater at 12100 Forest Hill Boulevard, about 5 minutes on foot, from 5 to 9 p.m., with live music starting at 6:30. If you bank there, the TD Bank branch at 12280 South Shore Boulevard, about 16 minutes on foot, is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., until 6 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., which helps if a cashier’s check is needed. The Wellington Post Office at 12794 Forest Hill Boulevard, Suite K2, is a short drive west, about 32 minutes on foot, and is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed on weekends.

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

In Palm Beach County, deeds are recorded by the Recording Department of the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, where Shannon Ramsey-Chessman serves as Clerk Ad Interim. The Clerk has no office in Wellington. The nearest counter that records deeds is the Clerk’s Royal Palm Beach Branch, just north of Wellington in Suite 400 of the Midwestern Communities Service Center, 200 Civic Center Way, Royal Palm Beach, open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at (561) 784-1271. The Clerk lists recording of documents among the services there, and deeds are not on the short list of documents that only the Main Courthouse in West Palm Beach will take.

To drive there, the Clerk says to take Okeechobee Boulevard west to Royal Palm Beach Boulevard, turn left, then turn right onto Civic Center Way. The Clerk’s other counters that record, in Palm Beach Gardens, Belle Glade and Delray Beach, are all farther from Wellington, and the Main Courthouse is at 205 North Dixie Highway in downtown West Palm Beach.

You will not need to make that drive. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Clerk’s own list of eRecording vendors, so the signed deed never travels by mail. The Clerk’s eRecording page says electronic submission reduces the time gap for recording, and it also says plainly that a mailed original comes back to the sender without a recording stamp. The Clerk posts the recording fee as $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, so a two-page deed costs $18.50 to record.

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 Dorothy Jacks, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser. The appraiser’s office nearest Wellington is in the same building as the Clerk’s Royal Palm Beach Branch, the Mayor Fred Pinto Midwestern Community Building at 200 Civic Center Way, Suite 200, at 561.784.1220, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Exemption questions also go to 561.355.2866 or [email protected]. You can file online, at any of the appraiser’s five service centers, or by mail. You must qualify on January 1 and file by March 1, and the appraiser takes late applications in person at a branch until mid-September.

Once you qualify, the exemption renews itself, and each December the appraiser mails a pink and white receipt card. The appraiser asks owners to call when ownership changes by sale, marriage, divorce or death, and its homestead page says Florida law requires a new application when you change the manner in which title is held on your existing homestead. Before we record, ask us whether your lady bird deed calls for one, and we will check it with the appraiser’s exemptions staff.

If your home is going into a trust instead of a lady bird deed, the appraiser does not want the trust agreement. The appraiser asks instead for a Certificate of Trust, sent to [email protected] or mailed to Exemption Services at 301 North Olive Avenue in West Palm Beach.

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 Palm Beach 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 issues certified death certificates in Palm Beach County at three offices, and the one nearest Wellington is the Main Office at 800 Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach, weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (closing at 2 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month), for $15 a copy. Vital Statistics answers at 561-837-5847, and the office issues certificates for Florida deaths from 2009 on. 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. Images there go back to January 1, 1968, which reaches back past the day Wellington became a village, so the deed from your purchase is usually in the same place.

Uncertified, watermarked copies are free to view, save and print from the Clerk’s website. For a paper copy in Wellington, the Wellington Branch of the Palm Beach County Library System at 1951 Royal Fern Drive, about 20 minutes on foot from Village Hall, prints black and white copies for 25 cents a page and color for 50 cents. The library’s machines take cash only, and no bill larger than $5. The UPS Store #2128 at 11924 West Forest Hill Boulevard, Suite 10A, about 9 minutes on foot from Village Hall, also offers printing and copies, at (561) 791-9020.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify it at a Clerk counter, or $8 per document for an electronically certified copy ordered online, which downloads right after purchase.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Fraud Alert. The Clerk emails you within 24 hours when a document is recorded that exactly matches the name, address or parcel number you registered. Because the match has to be exact, the Clerk asks you to register every variation of your name and address, each owner separately, and a trust as a business name ending in the word Trust.

Wellington’s Patriot Memorial stands about 2 minutes on foot from Village Hall. The Village dedicated it on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and its centerpiece is a three-column section of steel from the South Tower of the World Trade Center, once a window section of the 69th to 71st floors, beside an eternal flame fountain and glass panels etched with the victims’ names. The Veterans Memorial, about 7 minutes on foot at the corner of South Shore Boulevard and Forest Hill Boulevard (11848 Forest Hill Boulevard), honors every veteran who served, and families can buy an engraved brick through the Village’s Public Works department at 561-791-4000.

Wellington’s own history explains why planning an estate matters here. In 1951 Charles Oliver Wellington, a New York accountant and investor, bought the land that became the Flying Cow Ranch, and the Village’s account says it was his death in 1959 that led the family to begin developing the property, to raise money for estate taxes. Wellington became a village on December 31, 1995.

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 Palm Beach County Property Appraiser lists an additional $5,000 exemption for a veteran with a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more, a total exemption for a veteran whose total and permanent disability is service-connected, and a discount for a veteran 65 or older whose disability is combat-related. The appraiser verifies each VA letter with the local VA office before approving it, and a surviving spouse can keep some of these exemptions.

For help with the paperwork, the Property Appraiser points veterans to the Palm Beach County Veteran Services office at 561.355.4761. The same homestead forms can be filed at the appraiser’s office at 200 Civic Center Way.

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. In Palm Beach County the driver license offices are run by the Tax Collector, serve county residents only, and see customers by reservation. The two nearest Wellington are at 16440 Town Center Parkway South in Westlake and at 4215 South Military Trail in Greenacres, both at 561-355-2264, with driver license service weekdays from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.