Highlands County Quitclaim Deed (Trustee Grantee) Form

Florida treats the word trustee on a deed with suspicion. Under section 689.07 of the Florida Statutes, a deed made out to a grantee as trustee that names no beneficiaries, states no trust purposes, and identifies no trust by title or date is declared to grant the grantee a fee simple estate personally, with full power to sell and encumber the property. A conveyance meant to fund a trust can end up titling the land in one person's own name. This Florida Quitclaim Deed (Trustee Grantee) is drafted around that statute: it identifies the trust by name and date and carries the recorded trustee-powers language Florida law gives effect.

The statutory quitclaim, aimed at a trustee

The deed follows the quitclaim form Florida enacted in 2023 as section 689.025. The grantor remises, releases, and quitclaims all right, title, interest, claim, and demand in the described parcel, with no covenant or warranty of title; the grantee takes exactly the interest the grantor holds. That posture matches the most common setting for a trustee-grantee deed, the transfer of property into the owner's own revocable living trust. Section 689.075 confirms that a trust remains valid even though the settlor keeps the power to revoke or amend it.

Powers the record can rely on

Section 689.073 gives recorded trustee-powers language real consequences. A recorded deed that designates the grantee as trustee and confers the power to protect, to conserve, to sell, to lease, to encumber, or otherwise to manage and dispose of the property vests that authority in the trustee of record. A later buyer, lender, or title agent dealing with the trustee is not obligated to inquire into the trust agreement, the trustee's authority, or the beneficiaries, and takes free of beneficiary claims. The deed carries that statutory wording verbatim, for the named trustee and any successor trustee, so the trust agreement stays private while the public record supplies the authority.

Witnesses, joinder, and the county record

Execution follows Florida's deed formalities: the grantor signs before two subscribing witnesses under section 689.01, and since January 1, 2024, each witness's printed name and post-office address must appear on the instrument. The notary certificate follows the statutory short form, with the physical-presence or online-notarization election. Because article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution requires a spouse's joinder in a lifetime alienation of homestead, the form includes a labeled joining-spouse signature block for a married grantor conveying homestead property into the trust; it stays blank otherwise. The deed reserves the clerk's statutory stamp spaces and includes the parcel identification number blank that section 689.025 requires. A deed funding a grantor's revocable trust ordinarily owes only the minimum documentary stamp tax at recording under the Department of Revenue's rules for nominal-consideration and revocable-trust conveyances, while encumbered property follows the consideration rules of section 201.02.

What arrives in the package

The download includes the blank deed as a fillable PDF with a removable instructions page, a completed example showing a realistic Orange County transfer into a revocable living trust, and a plain-language guide that walks through every section, the witness and notary requirements, and recording with the clerk of the circuit court. The materials are informational and are not legal advice; a Florida attorney can apply these statutes to a particular title or trust.