Florida Estate Planning Attorney

What a Florida Estate Plan Actually Is

An estate plan is a coordinated set of documents, not one piece of paper. Together they control who gets what and when, who acts for you if you can’t, and how to keep your family out of probate and guardianship court. See the full estate planning checklist →

Without a will, Florida law decides your heirs and their shares for you, and your estate goes through probate anyway. Planning is how you take that pen back.

The Core Documents Every Florida Adult Needs

• A will (or, for many, a revocable living trust plus a pour-over will) to direct your property and name a guardian for minor children.
• A durable power of attorney so someone can handle money and property if you’re incapacitated. The power of attorney is the document that avoids a guardianship.
• A designation of health-care surrogate for medical decisions, a living will for end-of-life wishes, and a HIPAA authorization so the people you name can actually get medical information.
• For homeowners, a lady bird deed to pass the Florida homestead outside probate while you keep full control.

Most Floridians get around to this list when something forces the question, and for a lot of families that something is a storm in the forecast. If that is where you are right now, we wrote the fast version of the same list in the documents to have ready before hurricane season.

What Is the Difference Between a Will and a Living Trust in Florida?

A common question I hear is, “What is the difference between a will and a living trust?” A will directs your property after death, still goes through probate, and controls only the probate estate. A revocable living trust avoids probate on funded assets, manages them if you lose capacity, and keeps your plan private, but only for assets actually re-titled into it.

Choose a trust when you have multiple or out-of-state property, minor children, blended families, special-needs beneficiaries, or strong incapacity-management needs. A will-based plan is often enough for simpler estates. The will-based plan includes a lady bird deed on the home, and we coordinate the beneficiary designations. Try the deed selector if you are not sure →

If you are marrying or remarrying, a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement is how you protect separate property, a business, and children from a prior relationship, and how a spouse waives the elective share. We draft them as part of the plan.

For an observant Jewish family, we coordinate your secular plan with a halachic will so your estate honors both Florida law and Jewish law. See the guide for Americans living in Israel with US assets →

If you have a financial advisor, we work alongside your advisor and CPA. See how the two roles fit together →

Incapacity Planning: The Half People Forget

Estate planning is not only about death. The durable power of attorney, the health-care surrogate and living will, and a successor trustee keep your life running if you’re hospitalized or develop dementia. The same documents keep your family out of a public, slow, expensive guardianship.

Florida has three traps to know. First, a durable POA is effective immediately under Florida law; a “springing” POA that only activates on incapacity is not recognized here. Second, certain high-risk powers (gifts, creating or amending trusts, changing beneficiaries) must be separately initialed to work at all. Third, a HIPAA release is what lets your agent prove the incapacity that starts their authority.

The cost of skipping this is measured in years rather than dollars. A will that leaves everything to a spouse, written before that spouse was hurt, pays the estate to somebody who cannot receive it, and a will that names that same spouse as executor sends the family to court for a guardianship first. Families arrive holding letters from two doctors and learn that a probate court does not accept a physician’s letter in place of an adjudication of incapacity. One plan drafted in 1989 and never reopened froze an inheritance for seven years and cost six figures on a house that sat empty through it, and the whole cascade is worth reading before you decide your own paperwork can wait another year.

Avoiding Probate in Florida

Probate means months of delay, a public record, and attorney’s fees calculated as a percentage of your estate’s value. Florida law presumes those fees reasonable, and a family cannot easily argue them down. The avoidance toolkit is a funded revocable trust, a lady bird deed on the homestead, and proper beneficiary, pay-on-death, and transfer-on-death designations on accounts (they override your will, so they must be coordinated).

The right mix depends on what you own and how it’s titled. See what probate actually costs → or read the probate guide.

If you own a business, the company belongs in the plan too. A trust can own your LLC so the company avoids probate, and co-owners need a buy-sell agreement so a death or divorce does not hand your business to the wrong people. See full business succession planning →

Florida Homestead: The Rule That Breaks DIY Plans

Your homestead cannot be left in a will to whoever you choose if you are survived by a spouse or a minor child, with a narrow exception that it may go to the spouse when there is no minor child. A will that ignores this rule is ineffective, and the home passes by statute instead. The surviving spouse typically takes a life estate with remainder to descendants, or may elect a one-half ownership share. See how Florida homestead law works →

The homestead rule is why the home, the will, the trust, and any deed have to be reconciled together, and it is the main reason online estate planning often fails in Florida.

Protecting a Spouse: What a Will Can’t Override

A surviving spouse has rights you cannot cut out by will alone. The 30% your spouse can claim regardless of your will (the elective share) is calculated across a broad estate that pulls in revocable-trust assets too, so moving things into a trust doesn’t defeat it. On top of that, a surviving spouse has rights to the homestead, certain exempt personal property, and a family allowance.

A spouse can waive these rights only in a valid written marital agreement. The waiver matters for every married client, and especially for blended families.

Blended Families, Minor Children, and Special Needs

Minor children cannot inherit outright, so we use a trust plus a guardian nominated in the will. Blended families balance a current spouse against children from a prior relationship, usually with a trust (a marital or QTIP structure plus defined children’s shares) and a written marital waiver.

For a special-needs beneficiary, a supplemental-needs trust preserves SSI and Medicaid eligibility. Never leave assets to a disabled beneficiary outright. Special-needs provisions add $750 to the plan; a standalone special-needs trust is a flat fee quoted at the consult.

Long-Term Care and Medicaid Planning in Florida

Nursing home care in Florida runs about $10,000 a month, and Medicare stops paying long before the money runs out. Most families learn this in a hospital hallway, when a parent is being discharged and someone has to decide who pays. The plan you built for death does nothing here, because a revocable living trust leaves your assets countable and available.

Medicaid pays for long-term care once you meet an income limit, an asset limit, and a medical level-of-care test. Two Florida tools do most of the work. A qualified income trust (a special account, sometimes called a Miller trust, that holds the income over the cap) solves an income problem for a flat fee from $750. A Medicaid asset protection trust moves assets out of reach, but it has to be signed more than five years before the application, which makes it a plan-ahead tool rather than a rescue.

The house is what families ask about first, and the answer is reassuring. Your homestead is exempt while you are alive, up to about $752,000 in equity for a single applicant, with no limit at all when a spouse, or a child under 21 or a disabled child, lives there. The real risk arrives after death, because Florida can seek reimbursement only from assets that pass through probate, and a lady bird deed keeps the home out of it. Can a nursing home take your house →

Crisis planning still works when a parent is already in a facility, and the fee is quoted at the consult once we see the assets and the income. Check the 2026 income and asset limits → or read the full Florida Medicaid planning guide.

Florida-Specific Advantages (and Limits)

Florida has no estate or inheritance tax (see does Florida have an estate tax, and how moving here escapes a high-tax state’s), and federal estate tax reaches only very large estates (about $15 million and up in 2026). If you or your spouse is not a US citizen, or you own assets or live across a border, the rules change sharply and need their own plan (see international and cross-border estate planning). For nearly all families the goals are probate avoidance, incapacity protection, and a full basis step-up at death (the "step-up" means your heirs inherit at today's market value, erasing capital gains). When a spouse dies, there is also one tax move worth knowing, estate tax portability, which preserves the late spouse's unused exemption if you file in time.

Two honest limits apply. A revocable trust does not protect assets from your creditors during life and does not help Medicaid eligibility. For those goals see asset protection, our Medicaid planning, and irrevocable trust pages. If you just moved to Florida, your out-of-state plan should be re-checked under Florida law. See domicile →

What It Costs, and How We Work

The fees are flat, with no surprises. The trust-based plan is $3,200 individual / $4,500 couple (trust, pour-over will, durable POA, health-care directives, and one funding deed). The will-based plan is $1,200 individual / $1,950 couple (will, POA, surrogate, living will, HIPAA, and a lady bird deed on the home). Add-on provisions are $750. Single documents start at $299. Government recording and filing costs are additional, at cost.

We work in three steps, starting with a free 30-minute consult, then a plain-English draft you review, then a guided signing with Florida formalities. We handle funding so the plan actually works. See full pricing →

Estate Planning Across Florida

We serve clients throughout Florida and beyond. Here are local pages for some of the areas we work in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The young family with a house and two kids. A Miami couple in their late 30s think they’re too young to need a plan. With no will, no guardian is named for the children, and homestead rules plus the minors-can’t-inherit-outright problem would put a court in charge of both the kids and the house. A will-based plan with a guardian nomination, minors’ trust provisions, and a lady bird deed solves it.

The retiree who moved from up north. A widow relocates to Naples with a trust drafted in New Jersey and never updated for Florida, with wrong homestead handling, a POA missing the Florida superpowers, and out-of-state execution. A Florida restatement plus a fresh durable POA and directives makes it enforceable here.

The blended family. A remarried man with adult children from a first marriage and a current spouse. A simple “all to my wife” will would disinherit his kids; doing nothing leaves the spouse’s 30% elective share fighting the children. A trust with a marital provision and defined children’s shares, plus a marital waiver, gives everyone certainty.

Sources of Law

• Wills, intestacy, homestead devise, spousal rights: Fla. Stat. ch. 732 (§732.502 execution; §§732.101 to 732.111 intestacy; §§732.4015, 732.401 homestead; §732.2065 elective share with §732.2035 trust inclusion; §732.402 exempt property; §732.702 waiver). Homestead: Art. X §4, Fla. Const.
• Revocable trusts: ch. 736 (§736.0505 (annotated), §736.1109 (annotated)). Powers of attorney: ch. 709 (§709.2104, §709.2108, §709.2202). Health-care directives: ch. 765. Probate fees §733.6171. Federal: IRC §1014. (retrieved 2026-07-11)
• Undue influence: Swiss v. Flanagan, No. 3D20-1500 (Fla. 3d DCA Oct. 13, 2021), applying In re Estate of Carpenter, 253 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1971); Fla. Stat. §732.5165 (a will procured by undue influence is void) and §733.107 (burden of proof). (official slip opinion, retrieved 2026-09-03)

What One Florida Will Contest Shows About Estate Plans

My drafting checklist is short, and every item on it is there because I watched its absence cause a problem. The list is about what people do around a signing rather than about the statutes, and I learned most of it from reading how plans fail in court.

In my practice, I read the will contests as the Florida appellate courts decide them, and a 2021 decision from the Third District is the one I would hand to anyone who believes a plan is finished once the lawyer has drafted it. A businessman in Monroe County, 77 when he died, had three adult children and a companion of many years. His 2001 will, signed with his long-time estate attorney, gave her an out-of-state condominium and gave the children the Florida property. In 2007 he went back to the same lawyer and had a new will drafted, $500,000 to her and the rest to the children. He never signed it. In 2009 he went back again and had another one drafted, a life estate in the condominium and $100,000 to her, with the rest split equally among the children (by every draft he was reducing her share). He never signed that one either. About three years later, in failing health and with her at his side, he asked the same lawyer to leave everything to her and nothing to the children. The lawyer asked for two competency evaluations and then declined to draft it. Two more lawyers came and went. A fourth, picked from a list she supplied, met him in a rehabilitation facility after a hip fracture and again, days after his release, at her home. The will he signed there left her everything except $5,000 to the eldest daughter, named her personal representative, and stated that a lifelong Florida resident lived out of state, which exposed the estate to another state’s inheritance tax. The affidavit signed with it called a divorced man a widower and called his eldest daughter his youngest. The week after he signed, he was diagnosed with dementia.

The youngest daughter contested the 2013 will, the trial court found undue influence, the appellate court affirmed, and the estate passed under the 2001 will. Nobody received the plan he had spent twelve years describing. The two wills drafted at his own direction by his own lawyer, the ones that would have carried his later intent, were sitting unsigned in a file.

In reviewing that case, I have a few take-home points.

The first is the signing. An unsigned draft protects nobody, and a plan the client took home to think about is the most common way I see a good plan fail. The practice pointer is to set the signing date when the draft goes out, and when the client wants changes, to make them and sign the corrected version at that meeting rather than start a second cycle. Avoid leaving a lawyer’s office with an unsigned will you intend to sign later, because later is the part nobody controls.

Second, an owner who wants a plan to hold up keeps the people who benefit from it out of the process. The court in that case counted who arranged the appointments, who supplied the list of lawyers, who sat in the meetings, who faxed edits to the draft, and who knew what the will said before it was signed. Every one of those was the beneficiary, and those are the questions I ask at a first meeting. Part of every planning meeting belongs to the person signing alone, without the beneficiaries in the room, and the file stays with the lawyer, because the missing drafts, invoices and correspondence in the fourth attorney’s records were among the facts the court held against that will. Avoid having the person who inherits pick the lawyer, sit through the meetings, and keep the signed original, even when that person is the one you trust most.

Third, the errors in a document are evidence about how it was made. That will placed a Florida resident out of state, and the affidavit got his marital history and the order of his daughters wrong. Mistakes like those leave a will valid on paper, and a judge still reads them as a picture of the signing, which in that case showed a man who could not check his own paperwork. Ten minutes spent reading every name, date and address in the plan back to the client before the signing, out loud, would have caught all three.

Lastly, and most importantly, look at what the failure cost. The 2009 will he never signed would have stated, in his own lawyer’s file and in his own words, what he wanted for his companion and for his children, and it would have been the document his daughter asked the court to admit. Signing it would have taken an afternoon, and a will-based plan at this firm is a flat fee from $1,200 for one person and $1,950 for a couple. What his family paid instead, by my count, was a trial, an appeal and a court file opened in 2015 that was still open in October 2021, and the plan that came out the other end was the one he had written when he was twelve years younger.

One honest limit applies. Undue influence turns on the facts of the signing, and the same seven factors the court used can point the other way when the person helping is simply the family member who drives. I cannot tell you from a page whether your own plan is safe from a contest, and I would not guess. What I can do at the consult is look at who is in the room and who is not, and build the signing so that the record answers those questions before anyone asks them.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Each case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated September 3, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. A consult doesn’t create that relationship; please don’t send confidential details until we’re engaged.