What Is a Remainderman?

A remainderman is the person who owns a property when a life estate ends, which is usually when the life tenant dies. Under Florida law the remainderman takes title at that moment without probate, and until then the life tenant has the right to live in the property and the duty to pay its taxes.

What Does Remainderman Mean on a Deed?

A remainderman is named in a deed that splits ownership across time. The deed gives one person a life estate, the right to live in or rent the property for life, and gives the remainder to someone else, who owns the property outright once the life estate ends. The person holding the life estate is the life tenant. The person holding the remainder is the remainderman.

Remainderman, remainder beneficiary and remainder person all name the same role. When a Florida deed names two or more remaindermen, they take as tenants in common, each owning a share, unless the deed expressly gives them a right of survivorship.

The Remainderman Under a Life Estate vs. a Lady Bird Deed

Florida families create a remainderman with one of two deeds, and the remainderman’s position under each is very different. A traditional life estate gives the remainderman a fixed interest the day the deed is signed. A lady bird deed, also called an enhanced life estate deed, keeps the owner’s power to sell, mortgage or change the deed without the remainderman.

Most Florida families naming a remainderman on their own home today use the lady bird version, because a traditional life estate hands a child a veto over the parent’s own home.

Does the Remainderman Own the Property?

Yes, the remainderman owns a future interest that becomes full ownership when the life estate ends. Until then the right to live in the property and collect its rent belongs to the life tenant.

Under a traditional life estate the future interest is real property from the day the deed is signed, and the remainderman’s creditors and divorce can reach it. Under a lady bird deed the owner can wipe out the remainderman’s interest at any time by selling or recording a new deed.

Can a Remainderman Sell or Force a Sale?

A remainderman can sell the remainder interest alone, and cannot force a sale of the house while the life estate lasts. A buyer of a remainder gets only the right to own the property after the life tenant dies, which is why few buyers want one.

Partition, the court action that forces co-owners to divide or sell a property, is not available here. The Florida Supreme Court held in 1946 that one remainderman cannot partition against another while a life estate is outstanding, and a Florida appellate court held in 1985 that a life tenant cannot partition against the remaindermen, because their interests come one after the other.

Once the life tenant dies, the remaindermen are ordinary co-owners. If they cannot agree on whether to sell, one of them can bring a partition action, and that is the most common fight over an inherited house with several names on it. The page on a lady bird deed with multiple beneficiaries covers how to draft around it.

Does the Remainderman Pay the Property Taxes?

No. Florida puts the property taxes, insurance, association fees and ordinary repairs on the life tenant for as long as the life estate lasts. A life tenant who lets the taxes go unpaid commits waste, which means harming the remainderman’s future interest, and the remainderman can go to court over it.

The homestead exemption stays with the life tenant too. Florida law treats a person living in a home under a life estate as holding equitable title for the exemption, so a parent who signs a lady bird deed keeps the exemption and the Save Our Homes cap.

Practice pointer. When I draft a life estate for someone other than the owner, such as a second spouse allowed to stay in the house, I write down who pays for a new roof and who pays the insurance deductible after a storm. The general rule answers the routine bills, and the deed should answer the large ones.

What Tax Basis Does the Remainderman Get?

When the owner keeps a life estate in the owner’s own home, federal law counts the whole home in the owner’s estate at death, and the remainderman’s tax basis resets to the home’s value on the date of death. A parent who bought for $90,000 and dies with the home worth $400,000 leaves the remainderman a $400,000 basis, so a prompt sale owes little or no capital gains tax. Florida has no estate tax, and the federal exemption is about $15 million per person for 2026.

The result is different when the owner gave the whole home away outright, as the step-up in basis page explains.

What Happens if the Remainderman Dies Before the Life Tenant?

No Florida statute decides what happens to a deed’s remainder when the remainderman dies first. Florida’s anti-lapse rule, which redirects a gift to a beneficiary who died before the person making the gift, applies to wills and does not reach deeds. Unless the deed says otherwise, the remainderman’s share can pass through the remainderman’s own estate, to the remainderman’s spouse, heirs or creditors, and that estate may need the probate the deed was meant to avoid.

I have found no Florida appellate decision on a lady bird remainderman who dies first, so the answer has to be written into the deed. There are two ways to do it.

1. Name a substitute for each remainderman. The deed says that a remainderman’s share passes to that person’s descendants per stirpes, or to the surviving remaindermen.
2. Name the trustee of a revocable trust as the remainderman. A trustee cannot die first, because the office continues under Florida’s Trust Code when the individual trustee changes.

Under a lady bird deed the owner can also record a new deed after a remainderman dies, which a traditional life estate does not allow.

What Is a Remainderman in a Trust?

In a trust the remainderman, usually called the remainder beneficiary, is the person who takes after the current beneficiary’s interest ends. In a trust that pays a surviving spouse for life and then the children, the children are the remainder beneficiaries. The trustee holds legal title the whole time.

Florida gives remainder beneficiaries rights to information once the trust is irrevocable. A beneficiary who would take if the current interests ended is a qualified beneficiary, and the trustee must keep qualified beneficiaries reasonably informed, give notice within 60 days after the trust becomes irrevocable, provide a copy of the trust on request, and account at least once a year. While the trust is still revocable, the trustee’s duties run only to the person who made it. The full list is on Florida trust beneficiary rights, and the trustee’s side is on what is a trustee.

In a charitable remainder trust the remainderman is a charity, which takes after the donor’s income interest ends.

What It Costs to Name a Remainderman on a Florida Deed

A lady bird deed is $399 for one owner or $449 for a couple, and a traditional life estate deed is $399, plus recording. A dispute between a life tenant and a remainderman is litigation, quoted per matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The son who could not be removed. A widow in Hernando County signed a traditional life estate deed in 2015 naming her son as remainderman. Ten years later she wants to sell and move into assisted living, and her son, now in a bitter divorce, will not sign. Under the deed she signed, the sale needs his signature. A lady bird deed would have let her sell alone.

The unpaid tax bill. A mother in Polk County holds a life estate in the family home, and her two sons are the remaindermen. The mother stops paying the property taxes after a hospital stay, and a tax certificate is sold on the house. The sons pay the taxes to protect their future interest and ask her to reimburse them, because the taxes are the life tenant’s bill under Florida law. A conversation about who pays, held when the deed was signed, would have kept the certificate from being sold.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §689.15 (a transfer to two or more creates a tenancy in common unless the instrument expressly provides for a right of survivorship). Fla. Stat. §732.603 (anti-lapse) is a wills provision and does not reach deeds. (retrieved 2026-10-01)
• Garcia-Tunon v. Garcia-Tunon, 472 So. 2d 1378 (Fla. 2d DCA 1985) (a life tenant cannot partition against the remaindermen under §64.031), reciting Weed v. Knox, 157 Fla. 896, 27 So. 2d 419 (Fla. 1946) (one remainderman cannot partition against another while a life estate is outstanding). Opinion read in full from the local case corpus, 2026-10-01.
• Sauls v. Crosby, 258 So. 2d 326, 327 (Fla. 1st DCA 1972) (an ordinary life tenant may not permanently diminish the remainderman’s future estate and is responsible for waste); Chapman v. Chapman, 526 So. 2d 131, 135 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988) (life tenants pay property taxes, and failure to pay is waste), as recited in Schneberger.
• Schneberger v. Schneberger, 979 So. 2d 981 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008) (a widow holding a life estate under a prenuptial agreement was responsible for taxes, insurance, association fees and ordinary repairs; the remainderman paid hurricane repairs from the insurance proceeds and the association’s special hurricane assessment), read in full from the local case corpus, 2026-10-01. Other parties’ case, not a matter handled by this firm.
• Fla. Stat. §196.041(2) (a person residing under an instrument granting a beneficial interest for life holds equitable title for the homestead exemption).
• IRC §2036 (property in which the decedent retained a life estate is included in the gross estate) and §1014 (basis of property acquired from a decedent).
• Fla. Stat. §736.0103 (annotated)(19) (qualified beneficiary); §736.0813 (annotated)(1)(b) to (d) and (4) (notice within 60 days after a trust becomes irrevocable, copy of the instrument on request, annual accounting; duties run only to the settlor while the trust is revocable); §736.0704 (annotated) (vacancy in the office of trustee).
• Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date. Government costs (recording, documentary stamp tax, certified copies) are additional and passed through at cost. Litigation is quoted per matter.

What Happens When the Life Tenant and the Remainderman Disagree

What I see is that the problem surfaces years later, when the person who could explain the intent has died. A life estate looks simple on the day it is signed, and the questions it leaves open arrive after the owner is gone.

A 2008 case from the Fourth District is a good example. Before a second marriage, a husband and his future wife signed a prenuptial agreement giving her the right to live in his home for the rest of her life if he died first, so long as she did not remarry, and she could not rent it out. The husband amended his trust to honor the agreement, and he died while they were still married. Then hurricanes damaged the house. His son from his first marriage was the remainderman and also the trustee, and the widow and her stepson could not agree on who paid for the repairs and the insurance. The widow argued that because she could not rent the house, she was not a true life tenant and should not carry a life tenant’s bills. The trial court disagreed, and the appellate court affirmed. The widow paid the taxes, the insurance, the association fees and the ordinary upkeep, and her stepson paid the hurricane repairs out of the insurance proceeds and the association’s special hurricane assessment.

In reading that case and the ones like it, I have a few take-home points.

The first is that a life estate puts two people with opposite interests on the same title. The widow wanted the house kept up at someone else’s expense and the stepson wanted his inheritance preserved at hers, and both positions were reasonable.

The second is that the husband’s documents answered who lived in the house and never answered who paid for it. A one-sentence allocation of the large expenses, written while he was alive, would have spared his widow and his son a trial and an appeal.

Avoid leaving a spouse a life estate in a home with a child as the remainderman without writing down who pays the taxes, the insurance and a storm rebuild. A trust holding the house, with a trustee and a budget, is often the better structure for a blended family.

The honest limit is that the opinion does not report what the repairs or the trial cost, and I will not guess. The court applied the general rule to fill a gap the documents left, and the family paid for a trial to learn what one sentence would have said.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a published decision of a Florida court rather than a matter 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, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.