Walton County Enhanced Life Estate Quitclaim Deed (Individual Grantor) Form

This Florida Enhanced Life Estate Quitclaim Deed is prepared for one grantor acting alone: a single owner of Florida real property who reserves a lady bird life estate and conveys the remainder to one named Remainder Beneficiary. It carries one grantor signature block, the two subscribing witness blocks Florida requires, and one acknowledgment certificate, with no joinder line for a spouse and no second grantor anywhere on the instrument. A widowed owner holding title alone, a divorced owner whose decree left the home in one name, and an owner who took title before marriage and holds it as non-homestead property present the one-grantor pattern the deed recites.

One signature, one certificate, one remainder

Section 1 identifies the grantor by name and post-office address, and Section 2 is a factual blank for the grantor's marital status. Section 3 names the single Remainder Beneficiary. Because the form fixes exactly one person on each side, the remainder it conveys is a sole remainder, with no tenancy among beneficiaries and no survivorship clause to draft. Section 9 supplies a lapse rule for that one beneficiary: a Remainder Beneficiary who does not survive the grantor takes nothing, and title remains in the grantor as if the deed had not been made. The acknowledgment certificate is built for one signer and follows the short form in section 695.25(1), Florida Statutes.

What the one grantor keeps

Section 8 reserves to the grantor, for life, possession and use of the property and its proceeds, together with the power to sell, convey, mortgage, lease, gift, or encumber it without the joinder, consent, or notice of the Remainder Beneficiary, to keep the proceeds, and to divest the remainder, including by recording a later deed. Those are the reserved powers Florida Uniform Title Standards 6.10 and 6.11 (June 2019) describe when they state that a life tenant holding them can convey or encumber the fee simple estate during life without the remainderman. The arrangement has no enabling statute; the Florida Supreme Court recognized a deed reserving possession for life and the right to resell in Oglesby v. Lee, 73 So. 840 (Fla. 1917).

Quitclaim words for the remainder

Section 9 conveys the remainder with the operative words of Florida's statutory quitclaim form in section 689.025, remise, release, and quitclaim, to have and to hold in fee simple upon the death of the grantor, if and only to the extent the reserved powers have not divested it. The deed states on its face that the Grantor makes no covenant or warranty of title, express or implied.

Where the single-grantor form stops

Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution describes alienation of homestead by the owner joined by the spouse if married. The deed carries no joinder block, so the configuration it recites is a grantor whose conveyance calls for none: an unmarried grantor, or a married grantor conveying property that is not the grantor's constitutional homestead. The same section's restriction on devise of homestead where a spouse or minor child survives, read onto the remainder by Uniform Title Standard 6.12, operates at the grantor's death, and the guide describes that interaction. Two grantors, a trustee or attorney in fact signing for the owner, and two or more remainder beneficiaries each present a different pattern from the one this deed carries.

Execution and the recording counter

Section 689.01, Florida Statutes, requires the deed to be signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses, and section 695.26(1)(c), as amended effective January 1, 2024, makes each witness's printed name and post-office address recording data; the two witness blocks carry both. On documentary stamp tax, the Department of Revenue's published ruling on enhanced life estate deeds, TAA 20B4-004 of October 16, 2020, concluded on the facts before it, unencumbered property and no other consideration, that the deed transferred no present beneficial interest and was not subject to the tax; the ruling binds the Department only as to the taxpayer who requested it, and the clerk collects what section 201.02 computes on the consideration shown.

The download contains the fillable deed formatted to section 695.26 recording standards, a completed example on an Orange County fact pattern with one grantor and one Remainder Beneficiary, and a plain-language guide to every blank, the signing mechanics, and the recording process. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.