How to Add Someone to a Deed in Florida

You add someone to a Florida deed by signing a new deed that conveys the property from you to you and the new owner, witnessed by two people, acknowledged before a notary, and recorded with the clerk in the county where the property sits. Adding a spouse is routine. Adding a child is a gift of part of the house today, so most parents who want a child to receive the house at death are better served by a lady bird deed, which names the child without giving away anything now.

1. How Do I Add Someone to My Deed in Florida?

Nobody writes a new name onto an existing deed. You record a new deed in which you are both the grantor (the person conveying) and one of the grantees (the people receiving), and it needs five things.

1. The exact legal description from your current deed, which is not the street address. Our guide on finding the legal description shows where it is.
2. The names and post office addresses of every grantee, and the name of the preparer.
3. How you will hold title. Two owners who are not married are tenants in common, each share passing through its owner’s estate, unless the deed expressly gives a right of survivorship.
4. Two subscribing witnesses, who may appear by audio-video technology.
5. A notary’s acknowledgment, in person or online.

Recording costs $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after it, about $18 to $30 for a typical deed. The usual form is a quitclaim deed, and a warranty deed also works. A married owner adding anyone other than the spouse to a homestead also needs the spouse to sign, as section 5 explains.

2. What Happens When I Add My Daughter or Son to My Deed?

Your child owns a share of the house the moment the deed is recorded, and a gift of real estate cannot be taken back by changing your mind.

• You need your child’s signature for a sale, a refinance, a home equity line or a reverse mortgage.
• Your child’s creditors can reach the share. A judgment against your child can attach to it, and in a bankruptcy whether Florida’s homestead protection covers it can turn on whether the child also lives there.
• Your child’s divorce reaches it. A gift to your child alone is ordinarily separate property in Florida, but mortgage payments made with marital money can make part of its growth marital.
• Your child’s death changes the plan. Without survivorship language, the child’s share passes under the child’s will, possibly to a son-in-law.

A co-owner also has no power to sign for you if you become ill. Signing for you belongs to a durable power of attorney.

3. Does Adding My Child to the Deed Avoid Probate?

Only if the deed says so in plain words. Florida has no automatic survivorship between co-owners who are not married, so a deed to “John Smith and Mary Smith” makes them tenants in common, and the parent’s half goes through probate at death.

A deed adding the child “as joint tenants with right of survivorship” passes the parent’s share without probate, but the child still owns half from the day of recording. A lady bird deed avoids probate on the whole house, names backups if a child dies first, and gives the child nothing until the parent’s death. The comparison with a trust is on our page about the lady bird deed vs. a living trust.

4. What Are the Tax Consequences of Adding a Child to a Deed?

The gift tax almost never costs anything. Half of a $300,000 house is a $150,000 gift, which needs a federal gift tax return (Form 709) because it exceeds the $19,000 annual exclusion for 2026, but owes no tax until your gifts pass $15 million. Florida has no gift tax.

The tax that costs money is your child’s capital gains tax later. A gift carries your original cost to your child, while property received at death takes its value on the date of death as its basis (the step-up in basis). Take a house bought for $90,000 and worth $300,000 at your death.

• Half added to your child, tenants in common. Your child’s half keeps your $45,000 basis. Your half steps up to $150,000 at death. A sale for $300,000 leaves your child $105,000 of taxable gain.
• The whole house by lady bird deed. The basis steps up to $300,000 at death, and a sale for $300,000 owes nothing.

With survivorship language and a parent who paid for the whole house, federal estate tax law generally counts the whole value in the parent’s estate, which can restore the full step-up. The result depends on proof of who paid.

Two Florida taxes also move. The Save Our Homes cap does not reset when you add a grantee and keep your own name on title, unless the added person applies for a homestead exemption there. And a mortgage makes documentary stamp tax due at 70 cents per $100 of the balance that goes with the share you give, as our documentary stamp tax guide shows.

5. How Does Adding a Child Affect My Homestead and Medicaid?

Your spouse has to sign. The Florida Constitution lets a married owner give away the homestead only when the spouse joins the deed, and a deed adding a child without the spouse’s signature is void as to the homestead. Your own share stays your protected homestead while you live there.

Medicaid counts the gift. Florida’s nursing home Medicaid program reviews every transfer in the five years before an application, and a share given to a child is a transfer for less than its value, costing months of coverage. Federal law exempts a transfer of the home to four groups.

1. Your spouse.
2. A child under 21, or a child who is blind or permanently disabled.
3. A sibling with an equity interest who lived there at least one year before you entered care.
4. A son or daughter who lived there at least two years before you entered care and whose care kept you at home.

Florida’s Medicaid manual treats a properly drafted lady bird deed as no transfer at all, so it starts no look-back. Our page on lady bird deeds and Medicaid planning covers estate recovery after death.

6. How Do I Add My Wife or Husband to the Deed?

Adding a spouse is easy. You sign a deed conveying the property to yourself and your spouse, Florida law makes the two of you tenants by the entireties, and your spouse does not have to sign. The Save Our Homes cap carries over, no stamp tax is due on a homestead when the only consideration is the mortgage, a creditor of only one spouse cannot reach the house, and the survivor owns it without probate.

A spouse who is not a U.S. citizen is the exception, because gifts to a non-citizen spouse do not get the unlimited marital deduction. Couples who want the house to reach their children after both deaths often use a joint lady bird deed, which does both jobs.

7. Is a Lady Bird Deed a Better Way to Put My House in My Son’s Name?

For most parents, yes. A lady bird deed (formally an enhanced life estate deed) keeps the whole house in your name for life and names your son as the person who receives it when you die. You keep the right to sell, mortgage or change the deed without his signature, and his creditors cannot reach the house while you are alive because his interest can be erased at any time.

The deed keeps the full step-up in basis, is not a completed gift, and starts no Medicaid look-back. The form page lists what a valid one must contain, and the after-death page shows how your son clears title. Adding a name still fits a spouse, a child buying in with real money, or a caregiver child who qualifies for a Medicaid exemption. A plain life estate deed is a third option, and our page on life estates in Florida explains why it gives away more than parents expect.

What Does It Cost to Add Someone to a Deed?

An attorney-prepared quitclaim, warranty or life estate deed is a flat fee from $399. A lady bird deed is a flat fee from $399 for one owner and $449 for a married couple. Recording and any documentary stamp tax are government costs, passed through at cost. Our full lady bird deed cost breakdown compares the form services.

Not sure which deed fits? The Florida Deed Selector picks one in four questions →

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The refinance that needed two signatures. A widow in Ocala adds her daughter to the deed in 2021 to avoid probate. In 2026 rates drop and she wants to refinance, and the lender requires her daughter, now living in Oregon and mid-divorce, to sign the new mortgage. A lady bird deed would have left the mother free to refinance alone.

The son who already lived there. A father in Lakeland enters a nursing home after his son has lived with him and cared for him for three years. A transfer of the home to that son falls within the caregiver exemption, so a deed adding him does not trigger the Medicaid penalty a gift to his sister would.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §689.01(1)-(2) (two subscribing witnesses; witnessing by audio-video technology); §695.26 (names, addresses and preparer on a recorded instrument); §28.24 (recording fees, $10 first page and $8.50 each additional page). Retrieved 2026-10-01.
• Fla. Stat. §689.15 (a conveyance to two or more creates a tenancy in common unless the instrument expressly provides for survivorship); §689.11(1) (conveyance from one spouse to both spouses creates an estate by the entireties; the grantee spouse need not execute).
• Fla. Const. Art. X, §4(a) and (c) (homestead exemption; an owner joined by the spouse if married may alienate the homestead by gift); Fla. Stat. §732.4017(1) (a lifetime transfer of homestead without a retained power to revoke or revest is not a devise).
• Fla. Stat. §193.155(3)(a)1.c and 2 (no change of ownership when the owner is both grantor and grantee and others are added, unless an added grantee applies for homestead; transfers between husband and wife).
• Fla. Stat. §201.02(1)(a) (70 cents per $100 of consideration, including any mortgage) and (7)(b) (homestead transfer between spouses where the only consideration is the mortgage); Fla. Admin. Code R. 12B-4.013 (gift of mortgaged realty taxed on the unpaid balance) and 12B-4.014(2)(a) (gift of unencumbered realty not taxable).
• IRC §1014 (basis at death), §1015 (carryover basis for gifts), §2503(b) ($19,000 annual exclusion for 2026), §2010 ($15,000,000 exemption), §2040(a) (joint tenancy included in the decedent’s estate except to the extent the survivor shows contribution), §2040(b) (half included for spouses), §2523(i) (no unlimited marital deduction for gifts to a non-citizen spouse).
• 42 U.S.C. §1396p(c)(1) (five-year look-back) and (c)(2)(A) (exempt transfers of the home to a spouse, a child under 21 or blind or disabled, a sibling with an equity interest and one year of residence, or a caregiver child with two years of residence); Florida DCF ESS Policy Manual §1640.0613.01 (a lady bird deed is treated as no transfer).
• Fla. Stat. §61.075(6)(b)2. (assets acquired separately by noninterspousal gift, bequest, devise or descent are nonmarital); (6)(a)1.b. (enhancement in value of a nonmarital asset from either party’s efforts or from marital funds is marital); (6)(a)1.c. (where marital funds pay down a mortgage on nonmarital real property, the principal paid and a coverture-fraction share of the passive appreciation are marital). Read on flsenate.gov, 2025 Statutes, retrieved 2026-10-01.
• Anemaet v. Martin-Senour Co., 114 So. 2d 23 (Fla. 2d DCA 1959) (remainder interest held not to qualify as homestead where the remainderman did not live on the lot, as described in Williams). Case retold below, In re Williams, 427 B.R. 541 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2010), read in full; retrieved 2026-10-01.
• Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date. Government costs, meaning recording, documentary stamps and certified copies, are additional and passed through at cost.

The Mother Whose House Went Into Her Son’s Bankruptcy

In 14 years of law practice, I have learned that a deed is read most carefully long after the person who signed it can explain it. I also litigate deeds after they fail, which enhances the practice of drafting deeds.

I keep a copy of a 2010 bankruptcy decision from Melrose, Florida, because it answers that question better than I can. A couple built their home there in the 1970s, with their son helping from the first shovelful of dirt, and the father died in 1979. In 1989 the mother signed a warranty deed giving the house to her son and keeping the right to live there for life, which is what a careful parent does. Twenty years later her son filed for bankruptcy, and the trustee claimed his interest in his mother’s house for his creditors.

The son kept it, and only because of a move he made for a different reason. In May 2008 he and his wife had moved in to care for his mother, then 83, and the bankruptcy court held that living there made his interest his own protected homestead. In an earlier Florida case, a remainderman who did not live on the lot lost that same argument. In the Melrose case, the deciding fact was a change of address eight months before the filing.

In reviewing these cases, I have a few take-home points.

The first is ownership. A deed that gives a child any interest now, even one that waits behind the parent’s life estate, puts the parent’s house into the child’s financial life. Avoid giving a child an interest the child’s creditors can reach while you still live in the house.

The second is control. I draft lady bird deeds so that an owner can prevent a future beneficiary from taking control of the owner’s property during the owner’s lifetime. Because the owner can erase the child’s interest at any time, a buyer or lender who deals with the owner takes the house free of the child’s creditors.

The third is timing. The mother signed in 1989, and the problem arrived in 2009.

The son kept his exemption on his own facts, and a child living across town might not have. Nobody can tell a parent in advance which child they will have in twenty years.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The cases described above are decisions of courts rather than matters handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on October 1, 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 and federal law and our posted fees, not legal or tax advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.