Highlands County Gift Deed (Married Grantor with Spouse Joinder) Form

One name on the title, two signatures on the deed. This Florida Gift Deed (Married Grantor with Spouse Joinder) conveys Florida real property that a married owner holds alone to one or two recipients for love and affection, with the owner's spouse on the instrument as a joining signer rather than a second grantor. The grantor recital, the joinder clause, and the spouse's signature block with its own witnesses and certificate are fixed deed text.

Why the spouse signs a deed to property the spouse never owned

Article X, Section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution provides that the owner of homestead real estate, joined by the spouse if married, may alienate the homestead by mortgage, sale or gift; the rule attaches to the marriage and the home, not to the names on the title. Section 8 of this deed answers it: the Joining Spouse joins in the execution of the deed for the purpose of that constitutional joinder, joins in the conveyance including any homestead or other interest of the joining spouse, and does not give the warranty, which the deed states is the grantor's. The clause does not recite that the property is homestead; it supplies the joinder the constitution describes, and the joinder rides with this configuration even where the parcel is not the homestead. Dower and curtesy are abolished under Section 732.111; the joinder is the constitutional one and nothing older.

A gift that says so, with the statutory warranty behind it

Section 4 of the deed states that the conveyance is a gift for love and affection and that no money or other valuable consideration has been or will be paid, the consideration the Florida Supreme Court held sufficient to pass legal title in Chase Federal Savings and Loan Association v. Schreiber, 479 So. 2d 90 (Fla. 1985). The granting and warranty words come from the statutory warranty deed of Section 689.02, Florida Statutes, and Section 689.03 gives a deed substantially in that form the full common-law covenants, subject here to the permitted exceptions entered in Section 6. Because the deed names no dollar amount, Rule 12B-4.014 treats a gift of unencumbered property as not taxable for documentary stamp tax, while a mortgage that stays on the property becomes the measure of the tax under Rule 12B-4.013.

One grantor, one joining spouse, one or two grantees

The deed recites, as fixed text, that the grantor is a married person and the sole record owner of the property, and that the joining spouse is the grantor's spouse. A married owner giving a house bought before the marriage to an adult child from an earlier marriage, and one giving inherited acreage to a grandchild, present the pattern the deed recites. The grantee block is open: one or two natural persons by name, with any vesting designation after the names. The form is not set up as a deed by two record owners, including spouses who hold title together, by an unmarried owner, by an entity, trustee, or attorney in fact, or to three or more grantees.

Two signers, four witnesses, two certificates

Section 689.01 requires a conveyance of a freehold to be signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses, and Section 695.26 calls for each witness's printed name and post-office address, so two witness blocks sit under the grantor's signature and two under the joining spouse's. Each signer then has a separate acknowledgment certificate in the short form of Section 695.25(1), with the physical presence or online notarization boxes the statute prints, the identification clause, and an area for the notary's rubber-stamp seal under Section 117.05. The separate certificates let the two signers acknowledge on different days or before different notaries.

Recording a Florida gift deed

The deed is recorded with the clerk of the circuit court in the county where the land lies, with the return and preparer blocks at the top of the first page, clear of the space Section 695.26 reserves for the clerk. The guide covers the clerk's page charges, the Miami-Dade County rate structure, and the change-of-ownership reassessment under Section 193.155 that follows a gift of homestead property.

The package includes the fillable deed, a completed example filled in for a Hillsborough County gift from a married owner, with the spouse joining, to an adult daughter, and the guide that explains each section and the signing, recording, and tax rules. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing law in general terms; they are not legal advice.