Florida Lady Bird Deed (Enhanced Life Estate Deed): 2026 Law

What a Lady Bird deed is in Florida law, and what is not written down

There are two deeds with similar names, and Florida law treats them differently.

• An ordinary life estate deed. The owner deeds the property to, say, the children, and keeps a life estate: the right to live there or rent it out for life. The children own the remainder from the day the deed is signed, and the owner cannot sell or mortgage the whole property without them.
• An enhanced life estate deed (“Lady Bird” deed). The owner keeps the life estate and reserves the power to sell, mortgage or otherwise convey the full property during life, without the remainder beneficiaries joining and keeping the proceeds. If the owner never uses the power, the beneficiaries take the property at death. If the owner sells, their remainder is gone.

The second deed is not in any Florida statute. Chapter 689 of the Florida Statutes, the chapter on conveyances of land, lists 37 sections in the 2026 edition, from how real estate is conveyed (689.01) to flood-risk disclosures (689.302), and none is about life estates with reserved powers (our count of the chapter index). Florida’s only transfer-on-death statute is chapter 711, the “Florida Uniform Transfer-on-Death Security Registration Act”, which covers securities and brokerage accounts.

The support is case law. In a decision of January 18, 1917, reported at 73 So. 840, the Florida Supreme Court reviewed a deed in which a father gave land to his daughter while keeping “full possession control of said premises, without charge during their natural lives” and reserving the right “to resell said lands to other parties.” He later sold to a third party. The court held that “a subsequent conveyance to another person by the father in pursuance of the express reservation is authorized” and reversed the decree for the daughter. The modern enhanced life estate deed works on the same idea: a reserved power, written into the deed, lets the grantor defeat the remainder (our reading). The 1917 deed was a gift that also required the father to substitute the proceeds for the daughter’s benefit, so it is the principle, not the form, that carries over (our reading).

Some law-firm pages cite a 1969 Florida Supreme Court decision, 223 So. 2d 727, as recognizing enhanced life estates. We read it: it is about a creditor’s judgment lien on a vested remainder that the debtor inherited, and it says nothing about reserved powers to sell (see the creditors section below).

Florida has no transfer-on-death deed: the record from 2020 to 2026

Searches for “florida transfer on death deed” assume one exists. We ran the Florida Senate’s own bill search on October 12, 2026, for every House and Senate bill in each regular and special session year, all versions:

The two 2017 hits show the search works: CS/CS/SB 724 became chapter 2017-121, and the phrase appears only in the list of “Pay On Death,” “Transfer On Death,” and similar accounts and securities that count toward a surviving spouse’s elective share (Florida Statutes section 732.2035(3)). No bill in those seven years proposed a real estate transfer-on-death deed. One legal glossary online says Florida adopted a transfer-on-death deed act at section 732.4015 effective July 1, 2024; the 2026 text of section 732.4015 is titled “Devise of homestead” and contains no such thing.

The homestead trap: sections 732.4015 and 732.4017

This is where a Florida deed can fail even when it is drafted and recorded correctly.

The Florida Constitution, art. X section 4(c), says the homestead “shall not be subject to devise if the owner is survived by spouse or minor child, except the homestead may be devised to the owner’s spouse if there be no minor child.” Section 732.4015(1) repeats it. The same constitutional paragraph lets a married owner give the homestead away during life only when “joined by the spouse if married.”

The question for a deed is whether it counts as a lifetime transfer or as a disguised devise. The Legislature answered in section 732.4017, added by chapter 2010-132. A lifetime transfer of homestead is not a devise, and does not descend under section 732.401, “if the transferor fails to retain a power, held in any capacity, acting alone or in conjunction with any other person, to revoke or revest that interest in the transferor.” Subsection (3)(a) adds that keeping a “life estate” does not by itself make it a devise.

Read together (our reading):

• An ordinary life estate deed of a homestead, signed by both spouses, fits the safe harbor: the owner keeps only a life estate, and the remainder is not a devise.
• A Lady Bird deed keeps exactly the kind of power section 732.4017(1) excludes: the power to take the whole property back by selling or deeding it to anyone, including the owner. It does not get the safe harbor, so if the owner dies leaving a spouse or a minor child, the remainder to the children can be treated as a devise that the Constitution forbids (our reading). Whether a particular deed’s reserved powers are a “power to revoke or revest” is a question of drafting and, in a dispute, for a court.
• If the devise fails, section 732.401 takes over: the spouse gets a life estate and the decedent’s descendants a vested remainder, or the spouse may elect, within 6 months of the death, an undivided one-half interest as a tenant in common. The rule does not apply to property held as tenants by the entireties or in joint tenancy with survivorship (section 732.401(5)).

A separate spousal right applies to every kind of property: the elective share, which is 30 percent of the elective estate (section 732.2065). Since chapter 2017-121, the elective estate includes the decedent’s protected homestead (section 732.2035(2)), and it includes property transferred but still revocable at death (subsection (5)) or in which the decedent kept the right to possession or use (subsection (6)), which describes both kinds of life estate deed on non-homestead property (our reading).

Documentary stamp tax and recording fees

The tax. Florida Statutes section 201.02(1)(a) charges 70 cents on each $100 of consideration on deeds. Consideration “includes, but is not limited to, the money paid or agreed to be paid; the discharge of an obligation; and the amount of any mortgage, purchase money mortgage lien, or other encumbrance, whether or not the underlying indebtedness is assumed.” A Lady Bird deed is usually signed for no price, so the Department of Revenue rules decide:

The rules do not mention life estate deeds at all (our reading of 12B-4.013 and 12B-4.014). On a house with a mortgage, the open question is how much of the debt the deed is treated as transferring; at the full rate, $150,000 of mortgage balance would mean $1,050.00 of tax (1,500 times $0.70, our arithmetic), so the closing agent’s position on that question matters. A mortgage also has its own rules on transfers, which the lender’s documents govern. Our Florida DSCR loan guide covers the separate stamp tax on the mortgage itself.

Recording. The clerk’s charges under section 28.24(13) are $5.00 for the first page and $4.00 for each additional page, plus the Public Records Modernization Trust Fund charge of $1.00 and $0.50, plus an additional service charge of $4 per page. That is $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, or $18.50 for a two-page deed (our sums).

Property tax: the life tenant keeps the exemption, the heirs may not keep the cap

During life. The life tenant keeps the homestead exemption. Section 196.041(2) gives it to a person whose right to possession rests on “a beneficial interest for life,” declared to be “equitable title to real estate” for the purposes of art. VII section 6 of the Constitution. Signing the deed also does not reset the Save Our Homes cap: section 193.155(3)(a)1.c excludes from “change of ownership” a transfer “by means of an instrument in which the owner is listed as both grantor and grantee of the real property and one or more other individuals are additionally named as grantee,” unless one of the added grantees applies for the exemption.

At death. The remainder beneficiaries become owners, and that is a change of ownership, so the property is assessed “at just value as of January 1 of the year following a change of ownership” (section 193.155(3)(a)), unless the new owner is:

• the surviving spouse (193.155(3)(a)2);
• the surviving spouse or minor child taking by operation of law under section 732.401 (193.155(3)(a)3); or
• a permanent resident legally or naturally dependent on the owner (193.155(3)(a)4).

Adult children who inherit through a Lady Bird deed fit none of those exceptions, so the cap ends (our reading). If they move in and claim the homestead exemption, the new cap starts from just value; if they already have their own homestead, they can carry up to $500,000 of Save Our Homes benefit from it under the portability rule (section 193.155(8)), but the inherited house’s own accumulated benefit is lost. The 2026 Legislature amended section 193.155 again (chapter 2026-239), effective for the 2027 tax roll; the change we can see rewords the portability paragraphs from “immediate prior homestead” to “prior homestead” (our comparison of the 2025 and 2026 texts).

How much is at stake, from the State’s own figures:

In our illustration, a house worth $457,556 (the 2025 mean) with a capped assessed value of $260,000 (our assumption) would be reassessed at $457,556 on the next January 1 after the owner’s death, an increase of $197,556 in assessed value before exemptions (our arithmetic). The deed type does not change this: a will, a trust or an ordinary life estate deed to the same adult children produces the same reassessment (our reading of 193.155(3)).

A proposal on the ballot, not law. CS/HJR 1-F, passed in the 2026 special session (House 75-26, Senate 30-9) and filed with the Secretary of State on June 16, 2026, is a proposed constitutional amendment for the general election on November 3, 2026. Its ballot statement says it “Exempts the first $250,000 of a homestead's value from taxation for all levies other than school district levies and requires, through general law, a schedule for full elimination.” It keeps the change-of-ownership reset for homesteads, takes effect January 1, 2027 if approved, and needs 60 percent of the votes cast on it (art. XI section 5(e)). Whether it passes does not change how a Lady Bird deed transfers title; it would change how much the reassessment costs (our reading).

Creditors, the remainder, and Medicaid estate recovery

The owner’s creditors. Art. X section 4(a) exempts a homestead from forced sale, up to 160 acres outside a municipality or one-half acre inside one, except for taxes, purchase-money and improvement obligations and labor on the property, and section 4(b) says these exemptions “shall inure to the surviving spouse or heirs of the owner.” A Lady Bird deed does not add to that protection; it keeps the owner as the person in possession (our reading).

The beneficiaries’ creditors. The ordinary life estate deed has a cost the enhanced one is designed to avoid. In 223 So. 2d 727 (Florida Supreme Court, May 14, 1969, amended on rehearing June 11, 1969), the court held that a judgment recorded against a person attached to the vested remainder she inherited, noting “the conceded fact that a remainder interest in real property is subject to levy.” It also quoted the rule that “a claim of homestead may not attach to either vested or contingent future estates or interests in land.” So with an ordinary life estate deed, a child’s judgment creditor, divorce or bankruptcy can reach the child’s remainder while the parent is alive (our reading). The 1969 case concerned a vested remainder; it does not decide how a remainder that the life tenant can wipe out by selling is treated (our reading).

Medicaid estate recovery. Florida’s “Medicaid Estate Recovery Act” is section 409.9101. The rules that matter for a deed:

• Recovery is for medical assistance paid after the recipient reached 55 years of age (subsection (3)).
• It is made “by the agency filing a statement of claim against the estate of a deceased Medicaid recipient as provided in part VII of chapter 733” (subsection (2)), that is, in the probate proceeding.
• “No debt under this section shall be enforced against any property that is determined to be exempt from the claims of creditors under the constitution or laws of this state” (subsection (7)), and real property that is “not protected homestead” can be sold to pay the claim (subsection (10)).
• No recovery while a spouse, a child under 21, or a blind or disabled child survives (subsection (6)), and a hardship waiver is available, for example for an heir who lived in the home for the 12 months before the death and owns no other residence (subsection (8)).

Federal law lets each state go further. Under 42 U.S.C. 1396p(b)(4)(B), the estate “may include, at the option of the State,” property passing outside probate, “including such assets conveyed to a survivor, heir, or assign of the deceased individual through joint tenancy, tenancy in common, survivorship, life estate, living trust, or other arrangement.” Florida’s statute does not use that option in its text: it recovers by claim against the probate estate (our reading of section 409.9101, which does not use the federal phrase or define an expanded estate). Property that passes to the remainder beneficiaries at death under the deed is not part of the probate estate (our reading). Medicaid eligibility rules for life estates and transfers are a separate matter set by the Department of Children and Families, which this page does not cover.

Federal tax: why the house gets a stepped-up basis

The deed is valuable to heirs mostly for an income tax reason, and it comes from three federal provisions working together.

1. No completed gift when the deed is signed. The Treasury regulation on gifts says: “A gift is incomplete in every instance in which a donor reserves the power to revest the beneficial title to the property in himself” (26 CFR 25.2511-2(c)). The reserved power to sell and keep the proceeds is that kind of power (our reading), so signing a Lady Bird deed is not a taxable gift.

2. Inclusion in the gross estate at death. Section 2036(a)(1) includes property the decedent transferred while keeping “the possession or enjoyment of, or the right to the income from, the property” for life, and section 2038(a)(1) includes property subject at death to a power “to alter, amend, revoke, or terminate.” A Lady Bird deed is covered by both; an ordinary life estate deed by section 2036(a)(1) (our reading).

3. Basis equal to value at death. Section 1014(b)(9) treats property as acquired from the decedent “if by reason thereof the property is required to be included in determining the value of the decedent's gross estate,” and section 1014(a)(1) sets the basis at “the fair market value of the property at the date of the decedent's death.” It applies whether or not any estate tax is owed (our reading; see our step-up in basis guide).

The comparison that matters: a gift deed. If the owner simply deeds the house to the children during life, section 1015(a) gives them the owner’s basis, “the same as it would be in the hands of the donor.”

The ordinary life estate deed has a gift-tax step the Lady Bird deed avoids. Its remainder is a completed gift on the day of signing, and a remainder is a future interest, which the annual exclusion does not cover: section 2503(b)(1) applies to “gifts (other than gifts of future interests in property).” Under section 6019 a gift not excluded by section 2503(b) requires a gift tax return (Form 709) whatever its size (our reading). How that gift is valued also has a trap: section 2702 values a retained interest in a transfer to family at zero unless an exception applies, and section 2702(c)(1) treats a transfer with a life interest as a transfer in trust; one exception, in 2702(a)(3)(A)(ii), is for a residence used as a personal residence. A rental or second home given this way can be valued as a gift of the whole property (our reading). This is drafting territory for an estate-planning attorney. Our capital gains guide covers the sale side.

The four ways to pass a Florida house, side by side

If the property is not in Florida

The homestead, documentary stamp, Save Our Homes and Medicaid recovery rules above are Florida’s and apply only to Florida land. The federal rules (sections 2036, 2038, 1014, 1015, 2503 and 2702) and the federal estate definition in 42 U.S.C. 1396p(b)(4) apply in every state. Other states’ deed statutes, including transfer-on-death deeds that Florida does not have, are outside this page; the law of the state where the land sits governs a deed of that land (our reading).

What a Florida owner, or an heir, can do with this

If you own a Florida home and are deciding:

• List who survives you today. A spouse or a minor child changes how a Lady Bird deed of homestead works (sections 732.4015, 732.4017, 732.401), and any deed of homestead needs a married owner’s spouse to sign (art. X section 4(c)).
• Ask what the deed reserves, in writing. The federal step-up depends on the house being in your gross estate; the Florida homestead safe harbor depends on your not keeping a power to revest. A Lady Bird deed trades the second for the first (our reading).
• Check the mortgage before signing. It affects the documentary stamp tax (12B-4.013(16)) and the lender’s transfer terms.
• Price the reassessment. Your property appraiser’s notice shows your just and assessed values; the gap is what adult heirs lose under section 193.155(3).
• Who drafts it. A Florida deed is prepared by a Florida estate-planning or real estate attorney, who can also say how Medicaid eligibility rules apply. We do not place a financial-adviser match on this page: an adviser cannot draft or record a deed, and the decision points above are legal ones.

If you have inherited through one: the two numbers that matter are the value at the date of death, which is your basis under section 1014, and the January 1 reassessment under section 193.155(3); a date-of-death appraisal documents the first, and the property appraiser’s next notice shows the second.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources, read and saved on October 12, 2026: the Florida Statutes 2026 edition from the Florida Legislature (leg.state.fl.us), sections 28.24, 193.155 (and the 2025 text for comparison), 196.041, 201.02, 409.9101, 689.075, the chapter 689 index, 711.501, 732.2035, 732.2065, 732.401, 732.4015 and 732.4017; the Constitution of the State of Florida, art. VII sections 4 and 6, art. X section 4 and art. XI section 5 (flsenate.gov); Florida Administrative Code rules 12B-4.013 and 12B-4.014 (flrules.org); Florida Supreme Court opinions 73 So. 840 (1917) and 223 So. 2d 727 (1969), read on CourtListener; Florida Senate bill searches for 2017 and 2020 to 2026, the CS/CS/SB 724 (2017) bill page and enrolled text, and the CS/HJR 1-F (2026) bill page and enrolled text; Florida Department of Revenue, 2026 County Just, Assessed, and Taxable Value (July 2026); Office of Economic and Demographic Research, Property Taxes: Homestead Distribution and Benefits (September 22, 2025); 26 U.S.C. 1014, 1015, 2033, 2036, 2038, 2503, 2702 and 6019 and 42 U.S.C. 1396p (U.S. Code 2024 edition, govinfo.gov); 26 CFR 25.2511-2 and 25.2702-5 (ecfr.gov). Sums, counts and the worked example are our arithmetic, with the assumptions stated. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.