Lady Bird Deed vs. Revocable Living Trust in Florida: Which Do You Need?

What Each Tool Actually Is

A lady bird deed (enhanced life estate deed) is a single deed on one Florida property. You keep a life estate with enhanced powers (sell, mortgage, revoke) and name who receives the home at your death. It rests on Florida common law and the Bar’s Uniform Title Standards 6.10 to 6.12. There is no lady bird deed statute. See the full lady bird deed guide →

A revocable living trust is a container built under Florida’s Trust Code. You fund it by re-titling assets into it during life, you’re usually your own trustee, and it’s fully revocable. When you die or become incapacitated, your successor trustee manages and distributes everything in it, without court.

Searched for a "lady bird trust"? There’s no such instrument, it’s a lady bird deed, not a trust. Here’s the full explanation of the "lady bird trust" mix-up →

The Side-by-Side Comparison

Swipe the table sideways to compare the deed and the trust.

Where They Agree

Both avoid probate on what they cover, both are revocable and keep you in full control, and both preserve the step-up in basis at death. Neither protects assets from your own creditors during life, and neither by itself qualifies you for Medicaid or saves estate tax. Both still need the rest of an incapacity plan, a durable power of attorney and health-care directives.

Where the Choice Actually Turns

The multi-state problem. A lady bird deed touches only Florida real estate. Own a cottage up north, and that property still triggers a separate “ancillary” probate in that state. A funded revocable trust holds title to all of it and skips the second probate, often the single fact that decides it.

Incapacity. A deed does nothing if you can’t manage your affairs. A trust’s successor trustee can step in immediately with a certification of trust. Banks resist powers of attorney far more than they resist a trustee.

Cost, in real numbers. A lady bird deed is $399 / $449 + recording; a trust-based plan is $3,200 / $4,500. The counterweight is what probate costs on assets a deed doesn’t cover, since Florida’s statutory fee schedule runs around 6% of the estate combined for attorney and personal representative. As a rough illustration, a trust often pays for itself once the probate estate it avoids climbs past a few hundred thousand dollars. That is context, not a promise. Estimate the probate it would avoid →

Homestead, and whether it survives the transfer. Both keep the homestead tax exemption and Save Our Homes cap, because a lady bird deed is no present transfer and for a trust the beneficiary’s equitable title qualifies. The constitutional creditor protection also survives inside a revocable trust, though that authority is at the appellate-court level, not the Florida Supreme Court. The rule that you can’t leave homestead away from a spouse or minor child, and that a spouse must join, applies to both.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

”Just the house.” Dolores, 78, Cape Coral. Widow, one paid-off Florida home, two adult kids who get along, a bank account already set to pass to them on death, an IRA with both named. No out-of-state property, no minors. The answer is a lady bird deed. A $3,200 trust would be over-engineering. The deed keeps the home out of probate for about $400. Her children are her heirs, so a Medicaid claim could not have reached the house in any event, and what she is really buying here is the probate.

”Florida home plus the lake house up north.” The Petersons. A Miami homestead, a North Carolina cottage, brokerage accounts, and a daughter with a disability. The right plan is a revocable trust as the backbone, holding both homes to avoid a second ancillary probate, with a special-needs sub-trust for the daughter, and optionally a lady bird deed on the Florida homestead so that house never enters probate at all. A deed alone can’t touch the NC house or protect the daughter’s benefits.

”The blended family.” Robert, remarried. He wants his spouse to live in the home and use his accounts for life, with the remainder to his own children. A lady bird deed would pass the house outright at death and runs into homestead limits on leaving the home away from a spouse. The right tool is a revocable trust with a marital structure. This is the case where a deed quietly fails to do what the client actually wants.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. Ch. 736 (Florida Trust Code): §736.0505 (annotated) (settlor’s creditors / homestead exemption inside a revocable trust), §736.1017 (annotated) (certification of trust), §736.1109 (annotated) (homestead devise limits), §736.0403 (annotated) (will-formality execution). flsenate.gov
• Fla. Stat. §196.041(2) (equitable title → homestead tax exemption); §734.102 (ancillary administration); §733.6171 / §733.617 (statutory probate fees).
• Engelke v. Estate of Engelke, 921 So. 2d 693 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006): homestead in a revocable trust keeps constitutional creditor protection (DCA-level authority).
• Medicaid estate recovery: Fla. Stat. §409.9101(3), (7) and (10) (debt runs to the probate estate, no enforcement against constitutionally exempt property, no forced sale of protected homestead); §732.103 (the heir class); Snyder v. Davis, 699 So. 2d 999 (Fla. 1997) (a devisee within that class takes the homestead exemption with it).
• Homestead limits: Fla. Const. Art. X §4(c); §732.4015; §732.7025. Step-up: IRC §1014. (retrieved 2026-06-05)

What Goes Wrong When Somebody Owns Both

In 14 years of law practice, the deed and the trust stop being an either-or question long before somebody calls me. They already have one of them, and they are about to sign the other without checking how the two fit together.

A common question I hear is, "If I already have a trust, do I still need a deed?" My answer depends on something most people cannot tell me off the top of their head, which is who holds title to the house at this moment.

In one case I have reviewed, a husband and wife set up a living trust and deeded two Florida properties into it. Ten years later, after his wife died, the husband sat down with an attorney and signed lady bird deeds on both properties. The deeds described him as an un-remarried widower conveying his own land. He did not own the land. His trust had owned it since 2006, and he had been holding it as trustee the whole time. Nobody pulled the title before the deeds were drawn.

That family got it fixed. A court reformed both deeds, and it said plainly that ordinary carelessness by the owner would not defeat reformation. What stays with me is how long the answer took to arrive. The question went through a summary judgment motion and an appeal before anybody knew whether the deeds worked.

Practice pointer. Pull the current recorded deed before signing a new one, every time, including when the client is certain they know what it says. Somebody who moved a house into a trust ten years ago remembers the trust and forgets the deed, and the deed is the part that decides who is allowed to sign.

Avoid treating the trust and the deed as competing purchases. An owner with a funded trust who then records a lady bird deed on the same house has two instruments pointing at one property, and which one controls is a question somebody will litigate after the owner is gone.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Any 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 6, 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.