Estate Planning Attorney for Winter Haven, 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, and the Polk County Property Appraiser says the same thing on its own help page. We set up the signing for you by video, so you can sign at home in Winter Haven with nobody driving anywhere.

If you would rather sign in person, The UPS Store at 1377 6th Street NW has a commissioned notary on staff, lists deeds among the documents it notarizes, offers notary service seven days a week, and takes appointments online. The store is about 17 minutes on foot from City Hall. Ask ahead whether it can supply the two witnesses, because the store says to check before you visit.

Polk’s Clerk does not publish a separate deed checklist, so the formal requirements are Florida’s, including each witness’s printed name and post office address under the signature. When we draft and record the deed, those details are handled.

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

In Polk County, deeds are recorded by Stacy M. Butterfield, the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, who also serves as County Recorder. The Clerk has no recording office in Winter Haven. Official records are recorded at three offices, and the one closest to Winter Haven is the Northeast Government Center, 200 Government Center Boulevard in Lake Alfred. The other two are the Polk County Courthouse in Bartow, 255 North Broadway Avenue, and the Lakeland Government Center, 930 East Parker Street. The Clerk’s offices are open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the main line is 863-534-4000.

You will not need to make the drive. We record your deed electronically through Simplifile, which is on the Polk Clerk’s own list of eRecording partners, so the original never leaves our hands and nothing travels by mail. The Clerk posts the recording fee as $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after that, so a two-page deed costs $18.50 to record, plus $1 for each name after the fourth.

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 Neil Combee, the Polk County Property Appraiser. The office nearest Winter Haven is in the Northeast Government Center, 200 Government Center Boulevard in Lake Alfred, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 863-401-2424, the same building where the Clerk records deeds. A second office is in Lakeland at 930 East Parker Street, Suite 272. The main office is at 255 North Wilson Avenue in Bartow, where the Property Appraiser’s site says counter service is paused during a renovation. The exemptions line is 863-534-4777, and the email is [email protected].

You can file online at exemptions.polkflpa.gov, which the Property Appraiser says takes most homeowners less than 15 minutes, or in person, by mail or by email. Bring your Florida driver license and Social Security number, plus a Florida voter or vehicle registration or another proof of residency showing the home’s address. The statutory deadline is March 1 each year. Applications for 2027 are being taken now, and once an exemption is approved it renews automatically.

The Property Appraiser answers the question that matters for a lady bird deed on its own FAQ page. To keep the homestead exemption, the person claiming it must have equitable title, a life estate, or a beneficial interest for life, and a lady bird deed keeps a life estate for you. If the home is held in a trust, the Property Appraiser may ask for a copy of the trust agreement after you apply.

Expect a lag after recording. The Property Appraiser’s deed department typically takes four to six weeks after a deed records before the new ownership shows on its website, and longer when volume is high, so the old owner line on the parcel page for a few weeks is normal.

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 Polk 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 Florida Department of Health in Polk County issues death certificates nearest Winter Haven at its Office of Vital Statistics on Government Center Boulevard in Lake Alfred, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 863-519-8446. The fee is $10 a certificate, and the county office covers 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 free official records search, which covers 1957 to the present, and you can print an uncertified copy at home at no charge. Polk keeps older deeds online too, back to 1861, in a separate historical deed search.

To print it in town, the Downtown Winter Haven Library at 325 Avenue A NW, about five minutes on foot from City Hall, lets you send a file from your phone, tablet or laptop to its printers and pick it up at the Walk-Up Window with a four-digit code, paying by card or PayPal. Print jobs wait 24 hours. The library is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 863-291-5880.

If a bank or title company asks for a certified copy, the Clerk offers electronic certification for official records, a tamper evident PDF you can download within minutes and print as often as you need. A mailed certified copy can be requested online as well. At the counter, the Clerk charges $1 a page for a copy and $2 to certify.

Then take two minutes to sign up for the Clerk’s free Property Alert, which the Clerk opens to anyone with records in Polk’s 17 municipalities, Winter Haven among them. You register with an email address and then choose your name, your parcel ID number, or both. Whenever a document is recorded in Polk County that matches, the Clerk emails you with instructions for finding it. If a deed you never signed shows up, the Clerk’s advice is to report it to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office at 863-298-6200 or your local police.

Winter Haven City Hall is at 451 Third Street NW, at 863-291-5600, and it doubles as a gallery. The Ridge Art Association keeps one of its two galleries inside City Hall, open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., so there is something to look at while you wait.

The errands are a short walk apart. Crews Bank & Trust, a Florida community bank, has its Winter Haven Central Park office at 347 West Central Avenue, about seven minutes on foot, which helps if you bank there and need a cashier’s check. The Winter Haven post office at 111 West Central Avenue is about ten minutes away, with the retail counter open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., for anything that has to go out by certified mail.

Winter Haven calls itself the Chain of Lakes City, and the city counts 50 lakes within or bordering its limits. The city’s trails run more than 13 miles, including 1.5 miles along Lake Howard and the 3.6 mile Chain of Lakes Trail, which the city calls the spine of the system.

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 Polk County Property Appraiser lists a $5,000 exemption for an honorably discharged veteran with a service connected disability of 10 percent or more, a full exemption on the homestead for a veteran with a service connected total and permanent disability, and a separate exemption for a veteran 65 or older with a combat related disability. Some of these carry over to a surviving spouse.

Polk County Veteran Services helps with the paperwork, and its office nearest Winter Haven is again the Northeast Government Center, 200 Government Center Boulevard in Lake Alfred, by appointment on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Appointments are made at 863-534-5220 or through the county’s online request form.

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 too, because the Property Appraiser asks for it when you file for homestead. 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 Polk County, driver licenses are issued by the Tax Collector, which has no service center in Winter Haven. The nearest is the Lake Alfred Service Center in the Northeast Government Center, 200 Government Center Boulevard, open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with driver license service by appointment and a 4 p.m. cutoff. The Winter Haven tag agency on Avenue M NW handles titles and registrations, not licenses.