The Short Answer
Florida has no instrument called a "lady bird trust." The name blends two different probate-avoidance tools that people mix up all the time, a lady bird deed and a living trust. A lady bird deed is a deed on your home, and a living trust is a container for your assets. If you searched for a lady bird trust, you almost certainly want one of those two, and most often it is the deed. The tool you are looking for is real, and it may cost a few hundred dollars rather than a few thousand.
The Two Tools People Confuse
| Lady bird deed | Revocable living trust | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A deed on one property | A container for many assets |
| Covers | Your home | Everything you fund into it |
| Avoids probate | Yes (for the home) | Yes (for all of it) |
| Typical cost | $399 to $449 + recording | $3,200 to $4,500 |
A lady bird deed handles the house cheaply, and a revocable living trust handles a whole estate. No hybrid "lady bird trust" sits in between.
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Which One You Actually Want
If your goal is to keep a single Florida home out of probate and pass it to your family, the lady bird deed almost certainly does the job, while you keep full control to sell or change your mind. If you own property in more than one state, have a blended family or minor children, want privacy, or want someone to manage everything if you lose capacity, a revocable living trust is usually the better tool. The deed selector walks you through the choice in four questions, and we sort out anything it cannot at the consult.
Can You Include a Second Home in Your Lady Bird Trust in Florida?
Yes, as long as the "lady bird trust" you mean is a lady bird deed, because the deed works on any Florida real estate and a second home simply gets a deed of its own. A common question I hear is, "Can you include a second home in your lady bird trust?" and the honest answer has two parts. The first is that each Florida property needs its own recorded deed, at a flat fee from $399 plus recording, or $199 for each additional property when the deeds ride inside a will or trust plan. The second is that a second home is a different animal from your homestead. No spouse has to join the deed and no minor-child restriction applies, because those rules protect a homestead and not an investment property, and the homestead tax breaks never applied to the second home in the first place. The deed still passes the property to your family at death outside probate, and it still keeps that property out of Medicaid estate recovery.
Two limits decide whether the deed is enough. Medicaid counts a second property as an asset while you are alive, unlike your exempt homestead, though a rental that earns market-rate income can sometimes be excluded under Florida’s rules while a vacation home that sits empty usually is not, so a second home plus long-term care on the horizon needs its own plan. And a Florida lady bird deed only works on Florida land. A second home in another state needs that state’s own transfer-on-death tool or a revocable trust that holds it, which is the one situation where the word "trust" in your search was the right word. The list of states that allow lady bird deeds tells you which case you are in, and the second-home section of the lady bird deed guide covers the Florida side in more detail.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is There Such a Thing as a Lady Bird Trust?
Florida has no legal instrument called a "lady bird trust." The name mixes up two different probate-avoidance tools, a lady bird deed and a living trust. A lady bird deed is a deed on your home, and a living trust is a separate container for your assets. People searching for a "lady bird trust" almost always want the lady bird deed, but sometimes a revocable living trust is the better fit. The deed and the trust are separate documents, and no hybrid called a lady bird trust exists.
What Is the Difference Between a Lady Bird Deed and a Trust?
A lady bird deed (its formal name is an enhanced life estate deed) is a single deed that passes one piece of Florida real estate, usually your home, to the people you name at your death, with no probate, while you keep full control during life. A revocable living trust is a broader tool. You move many assets into it, and it manages and distributes all of them at death or incapacity, also without probate. The deed handles the house cheaply; the trust handles a whole estate. Many people only need the deed.
Which One Do I Actually Need?
The answer depends on what you own and on your goals. If your main concern is keeping a single Florida home out of probate and passing it to your children, a lady bird deed (from $399) usually does the job. If you own property in more than one state, have a blended family or minor children, want privacy, or want someone to manage everything smoothly if you lose capacity, a revocable living trust is usually the better tool. We will tell you honestly which fits at the free consult, and often it is the cheaper one.
Does a Lady Bird Deed Avoid Probate Like a Trust Does?
A lady bird deed avoids probate for the property it covers. The deed passes your home outside probate automatically at your death, the same probate-avoidance a trust gives, but only for that one property. A trust avoids probate for everything you put inside it. So if a home is your main asset, the deed accomplishes most of what people want a "lady bird trust" to do, at a fraction of the cost.
Can I Put My Home in a Trust Instead of Using a Lady Bird Deed?
You can deed your home into a revocable living trust, and the home avoids probate that way too. The lady bird deed is the simpler, cheaper route when the home is the only thing you need to handle; the trust makes more sense when you are coordinating many assets or want the extra management features. Both keep your homestead protections intact when done correctly. We help you choose, and handle the deed either way.
What Happens If My Home Is Already in a Trust and I Sign a Lady Bird Deed?
A home you deeded into a trust is owned by the trustee, so a lady bird deed you sign in your own name conveys nothing, even after it is notarized and recorded. The fix is a deed signed by the trustee, or a deed moving the home out of the trust first. In a 2025 Florida appellate case, a family whose attorney never checked the title needed a lawsuit and an appeal, from 2020 to 2025, to have the deeds corrected. We read the trust’s funding deed before drafting, which is how the problem gets caught for $399 instead of in court.
How Much Does Each Cost in Florida?
We prepare a lady bird deed for a flat $399 (individual) or $449 (joint), plus county recording. A full revocable living trust plan is $3,200 for an individual or $4,500 for a couple, which includes the trust, a pour-over will, powers of attorney, health-care documents, and a funding deed. The right answer is whichever actually fits your situation, and we will not sell you the trust if a deed will do.
Common Situations
The "I want a lady bird trust" call. A daughter calls asking us to set up her mother’s "lady bird trust." We explain it is really a deed, look at the estate (one paid-off home, adult kids who get along), and a $399 lady bird deed does exactly what she wanted, no trust needed.
The case for the trust. A couple with a home in Florida, a condo up north, and a child with special needs also thought they wanted a "lady bird trust." Their situation actually calls for a revocable trust (plus a special needs trust), because a single deed cannot coordinate all of that.
The out-of-state son. A widow wants her Florida home to go to her son up north, and he dreads handling a Florida court case from a thousand miles away. A lady bird deed solves it. The home passes to him automatically at her death, with no probate for him to open or travel for. She keeps full control while she lives, including the right to sell or change her mind. He searched for a "lady bird trust," but the tool his mother needed was the $399 deed.
Sources of Law
- The lady bird (enhanced life estate) deed is recognized by Florida common law and the Florida Bar’s Uniform Title Standards; there is no "lady bird deed" or "lady bird trust" statute. Revocable trusts are governed by the Florida Trust Code, Fla. Stat. ch. 736. (retrieved 2026-06-08)
- Fla. Stat. §689.06: how trust property is conveyed, by a deed signed by the trustee in the presence of two subscribing witnesses. (retrieved 2026-09-03)
- The case retold below: Johnson (Krippes Living Trust) v. Johnson, No. 1D2024-1139 (Fla. 1st DCA May 7, 2025) (slip op.; not final until any timely rehearing motion is resolved) (lady bird deeds signed individually on property the trust owned, reformed for mutual mistake, ejectment by the successor trustee denied). Read in full; corpus in reference/caselaw/deeds/.
What One Florida Case Shows About a Deed and a Trust on the Same Property
In 14 years of law practice, I check the recording and the funding, because that is where I have seen most of these actually fail. The Florida case I use to explain what a deed and a trust do to each other was decided by the First District Court of Appeal on May 7, 2025, and the deed-versus-trust comparison tells the title side of it. The part that belongs here is the family.
A grandson moved in with his grandparents in 2016 to help with day-to-day life, and in 2017 they told him that if he stayed, their two properties would go to him and his sister. The properties had been in the grandparents’ living trust since 2006. After the grandmother died, the grandfather had the grandson call a Pensacola attorney to put the promise on paper, and the attorney, in gathering the property descriptions for the deeds, never learned that the trust owned the parcels. Lady bird deeds to the two grandchildren were signed in 2018 and recorded, and for two years nothing happened, which is how a defective deed usually behaves. The grandfather died in 2020. His daughter, who became successor trustee of the trust that still held title, sued that same year to evict her own two children from both properties, and her affidavit said her son had moved in to save money for school and had provided minimal help.
My reading of that case is that the agreement was treated as real and the paperwork never reached it. The grandchildren kept the properties, because the court reformed the deeds to read as signed by the trustee, but the answer arrived in May 2025, five years after the grandfather died and seven after the deeds were recorded. The court put the counterfactual in one sentence, that if the deeds had been prepared for the grandfather "to sign as trustee rather than individually, then the parties’ intention would have been carried out." A deed drawn from the trust’s own funding record, signed as trustee, would have passed both properties in 2020 without a lawsuit. I charge $399 for a lady bird deed, and reading the trust’s funding deed is part of that fee.
In reviewing that case, I have a few take-home points.
The first is the funding record. A trust that owns real estate should carry its own proof of what it owns, the recorded funding deed and a schedule of assets kept with the trust, so that the next attorney (or the next grandson) can see the title without guessing. Practice pointer. Every trust I draft leaves my office with its funding deed recorded and a schedule of what the trust holds, and every lady bird deed I draft on trust-owned property is signed by the trustee. Avoid leaving a caregiver’s promised inheritance to a deed alone when the property sits in a trust, because the successor trustee inherits the trust’s title and the lawsuit with it.
The second is the promise. Years of live-in help in exchange for the house is a contract, and in that case the daughter disputed how much help was given. Practice pointer. A promise like that goes into a signed writing at the time it is made, naming the property, the help expected and who signs as trustee, because the person who made the promise will not be in the courtroom to explain it.
Florida has no statute creating the lady bird deed, and no Florida court has addressed every way a deed and a trust can overlap, so when your property sits in a trust drafted in another state, I will tell you at the consult which questions the cases answer and which they do not.
Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The 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 on 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. Which tool fits depends on your facts. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.