Most Florida lawyers tell clients you can’t disinherit a spouse or minor child from the homestead. That is true, except for the part where it isn’t. The Florida Constitution restricts how you devise the homestead at death. It does not restrict how you hold title during life. Title beats devise every time, and we see...
Estate Planning
A client forwarded me an article last week. Same client who forwards me an article every couple of months. The article was real. The estate tax it described was real. It just doesn’t apply to anyone who lives in Florida. There is no Florida estate tax. There hasn’t been one in over twenty years. Florida’s...
Florida emergency temporary guardianship lasts 90 days and does not become permanent. Here is what families get wrong about ETGs under §744.3031....
Your IRA, 401(k), and life insurance go where the beneficiary form says, not where your will says. Here's what that means in Florida....
Your will doesn’t control your house. Not in Florida, not if you have a spouse or a minor child. There are three different things in Florida called “homestead” and almost everyone confuses them: the property tax exemption, creditor protection, and the devise and descent restriction. This post is only about the third one. It’s in...
Go pull your revocable trust out of the drawer. Find the paragraph that says something like “the minimum pecuniary amount necessary to reduce to zero the federal estate tax owed as a result of my death.” Or “that portion of the residue equal to the maximum amount that can pass free of federal estate tax.”...
Your will may not control what happens to your Florida home. If you have a surviving spouse or a minor child, Florida’s Constitution decides — not your documents. Most people don’t find this out until after someone dies, which is when fixing it becomes impossible. Florida’s homestead law restricts how you can leave your primary...
People used to ask me why they should hire an estate planning attorney instead of LegalZoom. Now they ask about ChatGPT. I’m not concerned. Let’s say you ask ChatGPT to draft your will. It does. It tells you how to sign in the presence of two witnesses who are also in the presence of each...