Is a Lady Bird Deed Legal in Florida?

A lady bird deed is legal in Florida. The deed rests on common law, meaning rules made by court decisions, and the Florida Supreme Court enforced the reserved power to sell that makes it work in 1917 and again in 1942. No Florida statute creates the deed, and the Florida Bar’s title standards, the state Medicaid agency and the Department of Revenue all treat a properly drafted one as valid.

The formal name is the enhanced life estate deed. You keep the house for life with the power to sell, mortgage or change your mind, and the people you name receive it at your death without probate. Our Florida lady bird deed guide covers how it works day to day.

1. Is There a Florida Lady Bird Deed Statute?

No. Florida has no statute that creates the lady bird deed, names it or prescribes a form for it. The Florida Bar says the same thing in the comments to its own title standards, which state that “there is no Florida Statute governing such conveyances and scant judicial authority supporting the practice.” Vermont took the other route and enacted an enhanced life estate deed statute with an optional form on July 13, 2020. Florida has not.

Statutes still shape a Florida lady bird deed in five places.

1. The execution rule. Every deed needs two subscribing witnesses.
2. The Florida Constitution’s homestead rule. A married owner’s spouse must join the deed, and a homestead cannot pass away from a surviving spouse or minor child.
3. The lifetime-transfer statute. Because a lady bird deed keeps the power to revoke, Florida treats its remainder like a gift by will for homestead purposes.
4. The 2018 spousal waiver statute. A spouse who joins the deed with the statutory sentence waives the homestead rights that would otherwise block it.
5. The homestead tax exemption. A life interest counts as equitable title, so the owner keeps the $50,000 exemption after signing.

2. Which Florida Courts Have Recognized the Lady Bird Deed?

Seven Florida appellate opinions deal with the instrument or the power it rests on. Two are Florida Supreme Court decisions from before the nickname existed.

• Oglesby v. Lee (Fla. 1917). A father who deeded land to his daughter and kept the right to resell it later sold it, and the daughter had no title left. The Bar’s title standards cite it.
• Green v. Barrow (Fla. 1942). A widow holding a life estate with power to convey sold land, and her buyer kept it. The story ends this page.
• Agee v. Brown (Fla. 4th DCA 2011). A deed giving the remainder to the attorney who drafted it was not void on that ground alone, but raised a rebuttable presumption of undue influence.
• Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. (Fla. 3d DCA 2023). A deed that said “grantor” where it meant “grantee” was reformed.
• Johnson v. Johnson (Fla. 1st DCA 2025). Lady bird deeds a widower signed individually, while title sat in his family trust, were reformed.
• Varano v. Varano (Fla. 4th DCA 2025). A deed with no power to sell left a widow unable to sell the house alone.
• Dominguez v. Suarez (Fla. 3d DCA 2026). A trial court that ordered a co-owner to sign a lady bird deed instead of partitioning the house was reversed.

None of the seven questions whether the deed is lawful. The litigation is about deeds missing the right words, signed in the wrong capacity, or prepared by someone who benefited from them. Our page on contesting a lady bird deed covers those fights.

3. Who Else in Florida Treats the Lady Bird Deed as Valid?

Three Florida institutions name the deed in their own rules, and in practice their positions matter as much as the cases.

• The Florida Bar. Uniform Title Standards 6.10 to 6.12, which title examiners and insurers work from, hold that a life tenant with the reserved powers can sell or mortgage without the remainder beneficiary, and that the buyer takes free of a judgment against the beneficiary. The standards call themselves the consensus view of the Bar’s Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section, so they persuade rather than bind a court.
• The Department of Children and Families. Florida’s Medicaid manual treats signing a lady bird deed as no transfer for the five-year look-back, as our Medicaid page explains.
• The Department of Revenue. Two advisements issued on October 16, 2020 hold that no documentary stamp tax is due on the deed, including on a mortgaged house.

4. What Is the Lady Bird Law People Search For?

No law carries the name. People who search for “lady bird law” or the “lady bird act” usually mean one of three things.

1. The rules behind the lady bird deed, which in Florida are the cases, the title standards and the homestead provisions described above.
2. A transfer on death deed statute from another state. Florida has no transfer on death deed for real estate, and our page on why Florida has no TOD deed explains what to use instead.
3. The Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which Lady Bird Johnson championed and which concerns billboards, not houses.

The name of the deed comes from a story about Lady Bird Johnson that no court has confirmed. Our page on why it is called a lady bird deed traces what is known.

5. What Makes a Lady Bird Deed Valid in Florida?

A deed is a lady bird deed because of what it says, and a Florida title examiner reading one looks for seven things.

1. The reserved power to sell, convey and mortgage the fee simple, meaning the whole property and not only the life estate, without the joinder of the remainder beneficiaries.
2. The power to keep the proceeds and to divest the remainder beneficiaries, which Title Standard 6.11 says the vesting deed must retain for the record to be clear.
3. Freedom from liability for waste, so the owner can use and change the property without answering to the beneficiaries.
4. The exact legal description from the current recorded deed.
5. Two witnesses and a notary, in person or by remote online notarization.
6. The spouse’s signature on a homestead, plus the statutory waiver sentence if the house is to pass to someone other than the spouse. A homestead cannot pass away from a minor child at all.
7. The right grantor. The deed must be signed by whoever holds title, which means the trustee if the house sits in a trust.

A deed missing the first two items is an ordinary life estate deed, which gives the beneficiaries an interest you cannot sell without them. Our lady bird deed form page walks through the language, and the life estate page shows the difference.

6. Does It Matter That Florida Has No Lady Bird Statute?

For the ordinary case, no. Florida title insurers insure sales by owners who signed lady bird deeds, and families clear title after a death by recording a death certificate, as our after-death guide shows. The deed has been part of Florida practice for decades.

The gap matters at the edges. With no statute, nothing fills in a missing provision, and some questions, such as the formalities for exercising the reserved power, have no controlling Florida decision. A deed that answers those questions in its own text does not depend on how a court would decide them. A revocable living trust, which rests on the Florida Trust Code, is the better tool for property in more than one state.

What Does a Lady Bird Deed Cost in Florida?

Our flat fee is $399 for one owner and $449 for a married couple, plus the county recording charge of about $18 to $30. The fee includes the consult, the legal description, the homestead and spouse language, and recording. The cost page compares form services and other attorneys.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The son who read that it was a loophole. A son in Tampa reads online that lady bird deeds are a legal gray area and asks whether his mother’s 2014 deed will hold. The deed reserves the power to sell in fee simple, names him and his sister, and was signed by his mother as a widow with two witnesses and a notary. Nothing in it needs fixing.

The deed from a Michigan form. A retired couple in The Villages used a Michigan lady bird deed form for their Florida home. The form says “grantors reserve a life estate” and nothing about selling the fee. Their deed is an ordinary life estate deed, and a corrective lady bird deed signed by both spouses fixes it.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Bar Uniform Title Standards 6.10 (enhanced life estate, non-homestead), 6.11 (life tenant and homestead), 6.12 (remainderman and homestead), 2024.09.04 update; the comment quoted above appears in 6.10 and 6.11. Authorities cited there include Oglesby v. Lee, 73 Fla. 39, 73 So. 840 (1917), and Aetna Ins. Co. v. LaGasse, 223 So. 2d 727 (Fla. 1969).
• Green v. Barrow, 8 So. 2d 283 (Fla. 1942) (a life estate with power to convey; the widow’s deed carried fee simple title to her grantee). Read in full; retrieved 2026-10-01.
• Agee v. Brown, 73 So. 3d 882 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011); Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of MI, 389 So. 3d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023); Johnson v. Johnson, No. 1D2024-1139 (Fla. 1st DCA May 7, 2025); Varano v. Varano, No. 4D2024-1571 (Fla. 4th DCA June 11, 2025); Dominguez v. Suarez, No. 3D2025-0823 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 26, 2026). The three slip opinions are cited by docket number.
• Fla. Stat. §689.01 (two subscribing witnesses); Fla. Const. Art. X, §4(c) (spousal joinder; devise restriction); Fla. Stat. §732.4017(1) (a lifetime transfer is not a devise only where no power to revoke or revest is retained); §732.7025 (waiver of homestead rights through deed, ch. 2018-22); §196.041(2) (a beneficial interest for life is equitable title for the homestead exemption).
• Florida DCF ESS Policy Manual §1640.0305.03 (enhanced life estate carries the same rights as complete ownership) and §1640.0613.01 (a lady bird deed is no transfer). Fla. Dep’t of Revenue Technical Assistance Advisements 20B4-003 and 20B4-004 (Oct. 16, 2020) (no documentary stamp tax on an enhanced life estate deed).
• Vermont, 27 V.S.A. ch. 6, enhanced life estate deeds, effective July 13, 2020, as described in St Pierre v. Morin (Vt. Super. Ct. Nov. 4, 2025).
• 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 Widow Who Sold Lots in Bonifay

There is less Florida authority here than people assume, and I have read all of it. The case I point to when someone asks whether the deed is legal is a 1942 Florida Supreme Court decision about a will.

M. M. Owens of Escambia County died in the 1930s and left his wife Mary everything he owned, to hold during her lifetime fully and in all respects as he held it. Whatever was left at her death would go to his brothers and sisters. On March 16, 1938, Mary sold lots in Bonifay to a man named W. F. Green, a sensible thing to do with land she had been told to hold as fully as her husband had. She died that December. A year later his siblings sued Green to take the lots back, arguing that Mary had owned only a life estate and could not sell more than that. The trial court agreed with them, and Green lost his land.

The Florida Supreme Court reversed. Reading the will as a whole, it held that Mary had a life estate with the power to sell, and that her deed gave Green full ownership. In the court’s words, the language “can mean nothing short of power to convey.” One justice dissented, and Green spent more than two years in court to keep lots he had paid for.

In reviewing every Florida case on this power, I have a few take-home points.

The first is that the power is old and settled. The Florida Supreme Court enforced it in 1917 and again in 1942, and an owner who reserves it expressly is on firm ground. I draft these so that an owner can prevent a future beneficiary from taking control of the owner’s property during the owner’s lifetime, and Green’s case is that principle seen from the buyer’s side.

The second is that the words carried the case. Mary’s power came from a sentence her husband wrote, read generously by six justices over one dissent. Avoid leaving the power to a court’s reading of general language. A lady bird deed should say in plain terms that the owner may sell the fee simple, keep the proceeds, and cut off the beneficiaries.

The third is that the fight came after Mary’s death, when she could no longer explain anything.

No Florida court has questioned whether a properly drafted lady bird deed is lawful, and I have found no case doing so. A few narrower questions about exercising the power remain undecided in Florida, and I will tell you when one of them touches your deed.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The cases described above are decisions of Florida 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 law and our posted fees, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Whether a particular deed is valid depends on its wording and how it was signed, which we confirm at a free consult.