Highlands County Enhanced Life Estate Quitclaim Deed (Unmarried Sole Owner Retaining the Life Estate) Form

An unmarried person who owns Florida real estate alone can record one deed that names who takes the property at death and leaves every lifetime power of ownership in the owner's hands. This Florida enhanced life estate quitclaim deed, the lady bird deed, is written for exactly that owner: one grantor, recited on the deed as an unmarried person and the sole owner, signing alone, with no joinder line on the instrument.

One owner, one signature, no joinder line

The form prints its configuration as deed text. Section 1 recites that the grantor named there is an unmarried person and the sole owner of the described property and executes the deed in the grantor's own right; the grantor's name and post office address are the entry beneath that sentence. Because the grantor is unmarried, the constitutional rule that has a spouse join an owner's alienation of homestead under Article X, Section 4(c) does not reach the signing, and the deed carries no spousal block. Section 689.01 of the Florida Statutes still requires two subscribing witnesses, so the grantor's block is followed by two witness blocks, each with the printed name and post office address Section 695.26 requires, and one acknowledgment certificate in the Section 695.25(1) short form closes the deed, with an open area for the notary's rubber-stamp seal.

What the owner keeps and what the grantee waits for

The reservation paragraph is the heart of the instrument. The grantor keeps a life estate with exclusive possession, use, rents, and profits, without liability for waste, and keeps the power to sell, convey, mortgage, lease, give, or otherwise dispose of the property in fee simple, to retain every dollar of the proceeds, and to revoke or amend the deed and change or eliminate the remainder, each exercisable alone, without the grantee's joinder, consent, or notice. The deed then states the other side: the remainder is subject to divestment, an instrument the grantor signs alone under the reserved powers passes or encumbers the fee to the extent it provides, and the grantee takes at the grantor's death whatever has not been disposed of, subject to any mortgage or lease then of record, with no right to possession or proceeds in the meantime.

A common-law deed on a statutory quitclaim

Florida has no enhanced life estate deed statute and no transfer on death deed statute, so the instrument borrows its conveyance from the statutory quitclaim form, Section 689.025, whose operative words, remise, release, and quitclaim, pass whatever interest the grantor holds without any warranty covenant. The reserved powers rest on Oglesby v. Lee, 73 Fla. 39, 73 So. 840 (1917), and on the Florida Bar's Uniform Title Standards 6.10 through 6.12, which describe the remainder under such a deed as vested subject to divestment; the guide walks through the Standards, the 2025 Varano decision, and Section 732.4017.

Patterns that present the unmarried sole owner

A widowed owner holding the family home alone and naming one adult child, a divorced owner naming two grandchildren with a designation of how they hold the remainder, and an owner who never married naming a niece and nephew as tenants in common each present the pattern this deed recites: a single record owner with no spouse to join and no co-owner to sign. The grantee section receives one or two natural persons with their post office addresses. The form is not set up as a deed by a married owner, by two co-owners, by a trustee or attorney in fact, or to a trust or three or more grantees.

Recording and the documentary stamp question

The deed records with the clerk of the circuit court of the county where the land lies. On tax, the Department of Revenue concluded in Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004 that a lady bird deed of unencumbered property transfers no present beneficial interest and owes no documentary stamp tax, a ruling that binds the Department only toward the taxpayer who asked for it under Section 213.22; clerks commonly collect the seventy-cent minimum on a deed reciting nominal consideration, and the guide describes the mortgaged-property question the ruling left open.

The package includes the fillable enhanced life estate quitclaim deed, a completed example for a Volusia County, Florida fact pattern, and the guide that explains each section, the reserved powers, the homestead rules, signing, and recording. This description and the guide are general accounts of the form and the law that governs it, not legal advice.