What to Do With a Lady Bird Deed After Death

What Do I Do With a Lady Bird Deed After the Owner Dies?

The question I get most about this is, "What do I do with the deed now that my mother has died?" The answer is that you record two documents and open no probate. When the owner of a lady bird deed dies, the property passes to the remainder beneficiaries automatically, outside probate. You are already the owner. What is left is a short, paperwork-only step, clearing the public record so a title company can confirm the transfer and insure a future sale. The step is usually two recorded documents, and it is not a court case.

The Steps to Clear the Title

In the county where the property sits, you record two things.

• A certified copy of the owner’s death certificate.
• An affidavit (commonly a continuous-marriage or survivorship affidavit, and sometimes a no-lien affidavit) that states the facts a title company needs, namely that the owner has died, who the beneficiaries are, and that no claims attach to the property.

Once those are on record, the beneficiaries hold clean, insurable title and can sell or refinance. A later sale then uses an ordinary warranty deed, like any Florida home sale. Recording costs $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after it in every Florida county, so the two documents together rarely cost more than $40 to record. We prepare and record them for you, so when you go to closing later, nothing snags.

You Do Not Open Probate for the Home

Skipping probate on the house is the whole reason the lady bird deed exists, and it delivers at death. The only time probate still comes up is for other assets the person owned in their own name that the deed did not cover. For the home itself, the recorded death certificate and affidavits do the job that a probate would otherwise do, in a fraction of the time and cost. If you are wondering what else needs handling, see what to do when a parent dies in Florida.

Do the Owner’s Debts Follow the House?

Some do and some do not, and the title search tells you which. A mortgage stays on the house, so the beneficiaries take the home subject to the loan and either keep paying it or pay it off at the sale (the lady bird deed with a mortgage page covers the loan side). The same is true of any lien that attached to the property itself during the owner’s life, and the federal tax lien is the one families miss in the files I review, because it attaches to everything the taxpayer owns on the day the IRS assesses the tax, whether or not the IRS has recorded anything yet. A Florida judgment against the owner that the creditor never enforced against the house is treated differently. The Florida Bar’s title standards take the position that the beneficiaries take the home free of it, because a judgment against a person who has died becomes a claim against the probate estate, and the house is not in the probate estate. One more rule cuts the other way. A judgment against a beneficiary attaches to the house on the day the owner dies, so a child who owes an unpaid judgment inherits a home with a lien on it.

A 2024 decision from a federal court in Tampa shows what the tax lien rule costs. A woman in Spring Hill who had prepared other people’s tax returns for a living owed the IRS for five of her own tax years, 1997 through 2001. On April 10, 2014 she bought a house on Eldridge Road in her own name with money from a sinkhole insurance settlement on her son’s former house, and on July 2, 2014 she recorded a lady bird deed naming her son and daughter as the beneficiaries. She believed that when she died the debt would go away and the IRS could not reach the house or her children, and she admitted the deed was recorded at least in part to keep the IRS from collecting through the house. The IRS assessed the tax while the house was in her name alone, which put the lien on the house before the deed existed, and it recorded its notice of lien on July 14, 2014, twelve days after the deed. Her children had paid nothing for their interest, so they were not buyers who could take free of a lien that had not yet been recorded. The court wrote that she "has tried to prevent the IRS from collecting a valid tax liability by conveying a residence worth several hundred thousand dollars to her son and daughter via a Lady Bird Deed," held that she owed $433,601.33 as of March 1, 2024, and held that whatever interest the son and daughter claimed in the house was encumbered by the lien.

Practice pointer. A lady bird deed moves a house around probate and moves nothing around a lien. Before the beneficiaries list the house, I pull the title search and read every lien on it against the date it attached, because a lien that predates the deed is paid at closing out of the sale price whether anyone planned for it or not. If the lien is the IRS’s, the collection due process page explains what can still be done about the underlying debt.

The Tax and Medicaid Payoff

Because the home passed outside probate, it is beyond Florida Medicaid estate recovery, which only reaches the probate estate, and Florida has no estate or inheritance tax. You also get a stepped-up tax basis to the home’s value on the date of death, so if you sell soon after, you usually owe little or no capital-gains tax. This is the lady bird deed doing exactly what it was set up to do.

If a Beneficiary Died First

Start by reading the deed’s wording. A well-drafted lady bird deed has contingent or "per stirpes" language so a deceased beneficiary’s share passes to the survivors or that person’s children. Without it, that share can fall back into probate, the one outcome the deed meant to avoid. We review the deed and tell you precisely how title now stands and whether anything needs cleaning up before you sell.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

A daughter sells within weeks. A daughter inherits her mother’s Naples home through a lady bird deed and wants to sell. We record the death certificate and a survivorship affidavit, the title company insures the sale, and she closes within weeks, no probate.

The title that was not cleared. A son tries to sell a home he inherited by lady bird deed but the closing stalls because the record was never updated after his father died. We record the missing documents and the sale proceeds.

One beneficiary died before the parent. One of three named children had died before the parent. Because the deed used per-stirpes language, that child’s share passed to the grandchildren, and we cleared title to all of them without a probate.

A tax lien turns up in the title search. Two children go to sell their father’s home and the title search shows a notice of federal tax lien recorded against him three years before he died. Because the lien attached before the deed, the closing pays the IRS out of the sale price and the children keep the balance, which is the outcome a title company will insure.

The refinance in the chain of title. Two brothers bring their father’s lady bird deed and death certificate to a closing, and the title examiner finds a refinance recorded after the deed. Because the owner keeps full power over the property for life, a later conveyance can override the remainder, so the examiner has to confirm the deed was still in effect at his death. A review of the chain shows the refinance added a new mortgage but no superseding deed, so the transfer stands. The brothers take the home subject to the loan, pay it off from the sale proceeds, and close.

Chapter 28 of Kevin D. Klagge’s free book, Are Florida Lady Bird Deeds Just for Women?, covers this question with every statute and case cited to its source.

Sources of Law

• Vehicles: Fla. Stat. §319.28(1)(b) and (c) (an heir of an owner who died without a will obtains a title on an affidavit that the estate is not indebted and the spouse and heirs have agreed on the division; where there is a will, a sworn copy and an affidavit, or a Florida attorney’s affidavit naming the rightful heirs). Retrieved 2026-10-22.
• A lady bird (enhanced life estate) deed passes the property to the remainder beneficiaries at the life tenant’s death by operation of the recorded deed, outside probate, as recognized by Florida common law and title-underwriting practice, retrieved 2026-06-08. Florida Bar Uniform Title Standards 6.10 to 6.12 (June 2019 revision, in the September 4, 2024 compilation) state the consensus of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section on title after the life tenant’s death, including that a judgment against the life tenant that was never levied does not follow the property and that a judgment against the remainderman attaches at the life tenant’s death, and the standards themselves note the scant judicial authority behind the practice (retrieved 2026-09-03).
• Fla. Stat. §733.706: claims on judgments against a decedent are filed in the same manner as other claims, and the section does not prevent enforcement of mortgages, security interests, or liens encumbering specific property. Fla. Stat. §733.702(1) and (4)(a): the 3-month claims deadline, and the carve-out for a proceeding to enforce a mortgage, security interest, or other lien on property of the decedent.
• 26 U.S.C. §6321 (lien for taxes on all property and rights to property), §6322 (the lien arises at assessment), and §6323(a) and (h)(6) (the lien is not valid against a purchaser until notice is filed, and a purchaser is one who gives adequate and full consideration), retrieved 2026-09-03.
• The decision retold above: United States v. VoShelle, No. 8:23-cv-1293 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 4, 2024) (order on cross-motions for summary judgment; no reporter citation; read in full from the CourtListener text; corpus file reference/caselaw/deeds/voshelle-mdfla-2024.md). The parties were not clients of this firm.
• An unrecorded deed found after the death: Fla. Stat. §695.01(1) (an unrecorded conveyance is not good against creditors or purchasers for value without notice); Fla. Bar Uniform Title Standard 16.2 (where the grantor died before recording, the examiner determines that the deed was delivered before the death); Parramore v. Parramore, 371 So. 2d 123 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978) (constructive delivery of deeds kept in a bank safe deposit box; opinion read in full, corpus file reference/caselaw/deeds/parramore-v-parramore-371-so2d-123.md). (2026-10-18)
• Fla. Stat. §409.9101: Medicaid estate recovery, limited to the probate estate. IRC §1014: step-up in basis at death. Florida has no state estate or inheritance tax.

What the After-Death Files Show

What I have not seen a deed do is erase a debt that was attached to the house before the deed was signed. The common answer to this is not wrong so much as incomplete, and the missing part is the part that costs money. Every guide says the home passes without probate, and that part holds up in the files I review. The part the guides leave out is that the home arrives with everything that was attached to it, and the family usually learns that from the title company rather than from the deed.

In 14 years of law practice, I also litigate deeds after they fail, which enhances the practice of drafting deeds, and the after-death files reach me in two shapes. In the first, the family recorded nothing, listed the house, and learned from the closing agent that the file needs a certified death certificate and a survivorship affidavit, which costs them a closing date rather than the house. In the second, the family recorded everything and the title search came back with a mortgage or a lien that nobody at the funeral had mentioned. The Spring Hill case above is the second shape at its most expensive. The IRS assessed the tax while the house was in the owner’s name alone, recorded its notice of lien on July 14, 2014, twelve days after the deed, and ten years later the children held a remainder interest in a house that the court declared encumbered for $433,601.33 and rising. The deed I draft costs $399 and comes with a consult that is free, and the sentence that consult supplies is that a lady bird deed moves the house around probate and moves nothing around a lien. Heard in 2014, that sentence would have sent the family to the debt itself (an installment agreement or an offer in compromise are the usual routes) instead of into ten years of defending a deed that could never hold the IRS off.

In reviewing that case and the Florida Bar’s title standards on this deed, I have a few take-home points.

The first is the difference between a debt and a lien. A debt is owed by the person, so after death it becomes a claim against the probate estate with a filing deadline of 3 months after the notice to creditors is first published, and the house passed outside that estate. A lien is attached to the property itself, so a mortgage, a recorded construction lien, or a federal tax lien rides along to the beneficiaries. Practice pointer. Ask the title company for the date each item attached and compare it with the date of death, because that comparison decides who pays. Avoid the assumption that a clean deed means a clean title, which is the assumption the Spring Hill family made and the one I meet most often in the after-death files.

Second, the beneficiaries’ own debts matter from the day of death. Under the title standards, a judgment against a remainder beneficiary attaches to the house the moment the life tenant dies, so a parent who names a child with an unpaid judgment hands that child’s creditor a lien on the family home. Practice pointer. An owner can name the beneficiaries in a way that keeps a troubled child’s share out of that child’s creditors’ reach, usually by routing the share through a trust, and the time to do it is while the owner is alive and can still change the deed.

Third, the clean-up itself is short, and delay is what makes it expensive. The death certificate and the affidavit take a few weeks to obtain and record, a title company insures the sale only once both are in the record, and a contract signed before they are recorded waits on them. I would rather record the two documents in the month after the death than explain to a buyer’s lender why the file is not ready.

In my reading, the title standards are the consensus of the Florida Bar’s real property section rather than a statute, and the standards themselves say there is scant judicial authority behind the practice. Where a lien, a surviving spouse’s homestead rights and a lady bird deed all meet on one house, no Florida appellate court has answered every question, and when one of those questions is yours I will say so at the consult rather than supply an answer the cases do not support.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The decision described above is a ruling of a federal court in Florida in another party’s matter rather than a matter handled by this firm, and it predicts nothing about any reader’s situation. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on October 18, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Title requirements depend on your deed and the county. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.