Estate Planning Attorney for West Palm Beach, 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 Department of Health in Palm Beach County notarizes deeds for $10 at its Vital Statistics office at 800 Clematis Street, about 11 minutes on foot from the courthouse, and has offered notary service there since 2017. Bring the complete, unsigned original and a government photo ID, along with your two witnesses. The UPS Store #6989 at 516 South Dixie Highway also lists notary service, and keeps separate notary hours, so call ahead. The Mandel Public Library notarizes for $5 a stamp, but its own list of documents it cannot notarize includes real estate conveyances, so a deed goes to the Department of Health counter or The UPS Store instead.

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 do come downtown, Mama Bella Gourmet Market at 518 South Dixie Highway, about 13 minutes on foot, sells sandwiches, salads and prepared meals, open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. If you bank there, the Chase branch at 316 Banyan Boulevard and the Wells Fargo branch at 303 Banyan Boulevard are each about 7 minutes on foot, which helps if a cashier’s check is needed. The Downtown West Palm Beach Post Office at 640 Clematis Street, about 10 minutes away, is open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed Saturday. For a few quiet minutes before the drive home, the city’s Centennial Square at 150 North Clematis Street has a fountain, benches and picnic tables, about 11 minutes on foot.

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 after her appointment by the circuit’s Chief Judge. The Recording Department is in Room 4.2500 of the Main Courthouse, 205 North Dixie Highway in downtown West Palm Beach, open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and answers at (561) 355-2991. The same building holds the probate counter, in Room 3.2300.

You will not need to go downtown. 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 exemptions counter is the Downtown Service Center on the first floor of the County Governmental Center, 301 North Olive Avenue, about 7 minutes on foot from the courthouse, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Exemption questions 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.

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. Certified death certificates are issued downtown at the Department of Health’s Main Office, 800 Clematis Street, 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, and an older record can be viewed on microfilm at the Main Courthouse.

Uncertified, watermarked copies are free to view, save and print from the Clerk’s website. To print one downtown for a few cents, the Mandel Public Library at 411 Clematis Street, about 5 minutes on foot from the courthouse, has printers on its first four floors at 10 cents a page in black and white and 50 cents in color, and you can send a file from your phone. The library is open Monday and Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday until 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m., at (561) 868-7700. For a paper copy printed for you, The UPS Store #6989 at 516 South Dixie Highway offers document printing and copies, about 13 minutes on foot from the courthouse, at (561) 631-8997.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk charges $1 a page plus $2 to certify it at the 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.

The Main Courthouse at 205 North Dixie Highway is named the Judge Daniel T. K. Hurley Courthouse. The Clerk says parking downtown is on the street and in nearby lots and garages, all of them paid. The city’s Clematis Garage at 500 Banyan Boulevard is about 5 minutes on foot from the courthouse and charges $1 for the first two hours, $2 for each half hour after that, and no more than $20 a day. Saturdays, Sundays and holidays are $5 for the whole day, except during special events.

Coming by train, the Brightline West Palm Beach station at 260 Quadrille Plaza Drive is about 8 minutes on foot from the courthouse, with its own parking garage open around the clock. Getting around downtown changed this year. RideWPB ended May 31, 2026, and the city’s new West Palm Move service, separate from the earlier trolley, began its fixed route on September 8, running every 10 minutes between the Norton Museum of Art and Northwood Village by way of downtown and Clematis Street, for $1 a ride, with no app needed. West Palm Move runs weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Across North Dixie Highway stands the county’s first courthouse, built in 1916 and now restored as the Historic Courthouse. The Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum fills its second floor, open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with free general admission. The Historical Society behind the museum began its collection in 1937 with a single gift from a West Palm Beach attorney, A. Stanley Bussey, who donated a black and white photograph of an island street scene. The modern courthouse across the street opened in 1995 to keep up with a growing county.

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 a full exemption from property taxes for a veteran with a total and permanent service-connected disability, proved with a 27/e Benefits Letter or a VA form letter 27-333, and the appraiser checks every letter with the VA before approving it. A veteran with a service-connected disability of 10 percent or more may qualify for an additional $5,000 exemption with a 27/e Benefits Letter or a VA form letter 27-125. The surviving spouse of a veteran who held the total and permanent exemption keeps a full exemption on the homestead.

The Property Appraiser sends veterans with questions to Palm Beach County Veteran Services at 561-355-4761. The appraiser’s own exemptions desk, at 561.355.2866 on the first floor of 301 North Olive Avenue, takes the application, and the filing deadline is March 1 of the year the exemption will apply.

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 West Palm Beach the driver license office is on the first floor of the Governmental Center, 301 North Olive Avenue, the same building as the Property Appraiser’s exemptions counter and about 7 minutes on foot from the courthouse. Driver license service runs weekdays from 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Palm Beach County Tax Collector runs the office and requires a reservation for in-person service, for Palm Beach County residents only, at pbctax.gov/reservations or 561-355-2264.