Highlands County Enhanced Life Estate Warranty Deed (Unmarried Sole Owner) Form

An unmarried Florida owner who holds title alone can sign a lady bird deed by herself, with no spouse to join and no co-owner to consult. This Florida enhanced life estate warranty deed is drawn for exactly that owner: one grantor, recited on the deed as an unmarried person and the sole owner, conveying the remainder with a full warranty while reserving the life estate and the power to undo the gift at any time.

One owner, one signature, nothing given up

The deed carries a single GRANTOR signature block, two subscribing witness blocks, and one acknowledgment certificate, every one of them used. Section 1 opens with fixed text stating that the grantor named below is an unmarried person and the sole owner of the property; the grantor's name and post office address are the only entries. Because the deed recites an unmarried grantor, it prints no spousal joinder line: Article X, Section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution, which conditions a married owner's alienation of homestead on the spouse joining, has no signer to reach here. A widowed owner, a divorced owner who took the home in the dissolution, and an owner who never married each present the single unmarried grantor this deed recites; a married owner, co-owners, a trustee, and an attorney in fact each sign in a configuration this form is not set up as.

What the grantor keeps

Section 7 is where the lady bird deed earns its name. The grantor reserves a life estate with exclusive possession and the rents, coupled with the power, exercisable alone, to sell, convey, mortgage, lease, gift, or otherwise dispose of the property in fee simple, with no joinder, consent, or notice to the grantee, keeping all proceeds and owing nothing for waste, together with a reserved power of revocation and of substituting a different grantee, exercised by recording a later instrument. The grantee takes, at the grantor's death, only what the grantor never sold, mortgaged away, or revoked, in fee simple absolute. No Florida statute creates the instrument; the Third District described it in Hirschenson v. Compu-Link Corp. of MI, 389 So. 3d 574 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023), as giving its holder the exclusive power to mortgage without the remainder person, and the Florida Bar's Uniform Title Standards 6.10 through 6.12 govern how title examiners read it.

A full warranty on a remainder the grantor can still revoke

Section 6 conveys with the words of the statutory warranty deed in Section 689.02, Florida Statutes, and Section 8 carries that section's covenant to fully warrant the title and defend it against the lawful claims of all persons, which Section 689.03 treats as the full common-law set. The warranty runs subject to the matters listed in Section 5 and to the reserved life estate.

The homestead rule that still reaches a single owner

An unmarried owner has no spouse to join, but Florida's constitutional restriction on devise of homestead has a second trigger: a minor child. Article X, Section 4(c) and Section 732.4015 provide that homestead is not subject to devise where the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child, and Uniform Title Standard 6.12 reads that restriction against the remainderman under a lady bird deed, who takes fee simple title at the life tenant's death only when the result does not violate it. The same rule returns if the grantor marries after recording and is survived by that spouse; the guide walks through both situations.

Witnesses, acknowledgment, and the clerk

The grantor signs before two subscribing witnesses under Section 689.01, each with a printed name line and the post office address line Section 695.26 has required since January 1, 2024, and acknowledges on the Section 695.25(1) short form, which reserves an area for the rubber-stamp seal. The deed is recorded with the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller of the county where the land lies; the Department of Revenue's Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004 found no documentary stamp tax due on a lady bird deed of unencumbered property, and the guide explains how clerks apply it and what changes when the property carries a mortgage.

The package includes the fillable enhanced life estate warranty deed form, a completed example filled in for a Pinellas County fact pattern, and the guide that walks through every section, the signing formalities, and recording. This description and the guide describe the form and Florida law in general terms; they are not legal advice.