Highlands County Enhanced Life Estate Quitclaim Deed Form

A Florida enhanced life estate quitclaim deed, the instrument most people call a lady bird deed, lets the owner of Florida real estate name who takes the property at death while keeping every power of ownership during life. This form prepares that deed for one or two natural-person grantors conveying to one or two grantees, with the reserved life estate and powers written into the deed as fixed text.

A remainder the grantor can take back

Under an ordinary life estate deed, neither the life tenant nor the remainderman can sell the whole without the other. This deed reserves more. The grantor keeps a life estate together with the power to sell, convey, mortgage, lease, give, or otherwise dispose of the property in fee simple, to keep all of the proceeds, and to revoke or amend the deed and change the remainder, without the grantee's joinder, consent, or notice. If the grantor never exercises those powers, the property passes to the grantee at the grantor's death under the recorded deed, outside probate.

No statute, a 1917 decision, and the title standards

Florida has no statute that creates an enhanced life estate deed and no transfer on death deed statute for real property. The instrument rests on Oglesby v. Lee, 73 Fla. 39, 73 So. 840 (1917), in which the Florida Supreme Court gave effect to a conveyance that reserved the right to sell and divested the grantee's interest when the grantor sold. Varano v. Varano (Fla. 4th DCA 2025) describes the lady bird deed as the instrument under which the life tenant conveys or mortgages without the remainderman, and the Florida Bar's Uniform Title Standards 6.10 through 6.12 govern how title examiners treat one. With no statute behind it, the drafting carries the weight, and the reservation paragraph states each power expressly.

Quitclaim words, Florida execution

The conveyance uses the words of the statutory quitclaim form, Florida Statutes Section 689.025, remise, release, and quitclaim, so the deed passes whatever interest the grantor holds and warrants nothing. Section 689.01 requires two subscribing witnesses, and Section 695.26 requires each witness's printed name and post office address, the preparer's name and address, and each party's post office address. The deed carries all of it, and each acknowledgment certificate follows the Section 695.25(1) short form with its physical presence or online notarization boxes and a reserved area for the notary's rubber-stamp seal.

One or two grantors, one or two grantees

The form recites nothing about marital status, existing title, or how the grantees will hold the remainder; those words are typed into the party blanks. Two grantor signature blocks, each with two witness blocks, and two acknowledgment certificates carry a deed by two owners; on a deed by one owner the second block and certificate stay blank. Where two grantors sign, the deed's construction paragraph gives the life estate and powers to both for their joint lives and then to the survivor, with the remainder taking effect at the last death. A married couple holding their homestead and a single owner naming two children as joint tenants with right of survivorship each present a pattern the blanks carry. An entity grantor, a representative signer, and three or more owners on either side are configurations this form is not set up as.

Homestead, spouses, and the documentary stamp tax

Article X, Section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution has the spouse join an owner's alienation of homestead by sale, mortgage, or gift, and the second grantor block is where that joinder appears. The same section restricts devise of homestead where a spouse or minor child survives, and Section 732.4017 limits its lifetime-transfer safe harbor to transfers in which the owner retains no power to revoke, a power this deed reserves by design; the guide describes the consequence under Uniform Title Standard 6.12. On the tax side, the Department of Revenue concluded in TAA 20B4-004, a technical assistance ruling under Section 213.22, that an enhanced life estate deed of unencumbered property transfers no present beneficial interest and is not subject to documentary stamp tax, a ruling that binds the Department only as to the taxpayer who asked and that left mortgaged property open.

The package includes the fillable enhanced life estate quitclaim deed, a completed example for an Orange County, Florida fact pattern, and the guide that walks through every section, the homestead rules, execution, and recording. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing law in general terms; they are not legal advice.