A will that leaves the Florida homestead to the wrong person is not rewritten by the court. It is disregarded, and section 732.401 of the Florida Statutes supplies the ending instead: a surviving spouse who can live in the house but cannot sell it, and children who own it but cannot use it.
This video is the plain version. No characters and no stopwatch. It takes the same four situations as the animated video and walks through what the statutes actually say in each one.
Here is the sequence the video follows, with the cites.
The restriction comes first. Article X, Section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution, restated in section 732.4015, bars a devise of the homestead when the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child, except a devise to the spouse when there is no minor child. Section 732.4015(2) extends the rule to a revocable trust, so moving the house into a trust changes nothing.
Descent comes second. When the devise fails, or there is no will, section 732.401(1) gives the surviving spouse a life estate and the descendants a vested remainder, per stirpes.
The election is the alternative. Under section 732.401(2) the spouse may instead take an undivided one-half interest as a tenant in common, with the other half vesting in the descendants. The election is made by recording a notice in the county where the property sits, within six months of the death and during the spouse’s lifetime. The deadline generally cannot be extended, and the election is irrevocable once made.
Waiver is the exception for spouses. Section 732.702 lets a spouse waive homestead rights in a written agreement signed before two witnesses, before or after the marriage, and section 732.7025 supplies deed language that waives the devise restriction. City National Bank v. Tescher, 578 So. 2d 701 (Fla. 1991), holds that with a valid waiver and no minor child, the restriction on devise is gone. A spouse cannot waive a minor child’s protection.
Entireties property is outside all of it. Section 732.401(5) says the section does not apply to property held as tenants by the entirety or as joint tenants with right of survivorship. The survivor takes by operation of law, and the deed beats the will every time. Divorce converts an entireties estate to a tenancy in common under section 689.15, at which point each former spouse’s half is back inside the rules.
With no spouse and no minor child, the homestead may be devised freely, and with no will it passes under the intestacy order in section 732.103: descendants, then parents, then brothers and sisters, and on down the list.
None of this is advice about a particular house. Whether the property is protected homestead at all is its own question, and the answer changes with the acreage and with who actually lived there. For the mechanics on your own facts, the homestead descent tool runs the same statutes.