Wills & Estate Planning
A will is not about death. It is about sparing the people you love a year of expensive uncertainty at the worst possible time.
A will is the legal document that says who receives your property and who administers your estate. Without one you die intestate, and Florida's statutes — not you — decide who inherits, in a fixed order that ignores everything you knew about your own family.
For that reason we regard a will as a necessity for every adult, not a document for the wealthy or the elderly.
The four documents most people need
A complete plan is usually more than a will. We prepare, as a package:
- Last Will and Testament — who inherits what, and who serves as your personal representative.
- Durable Power of Attorney — who can handle your financial and legal affairs if you cannot. Florida requires very specific language for certain powers, and a form downloaded from the internet routinely omits it.
- Designation of Health Care Surrogate — who makes medical decisions for you, and who may access your records.
- Living Will — your own instructions about life-prolonging treatment, so that nobody has to guess.
The last three matter while you are alive. They are the documents families end up desperate for at 2am in a hospital corridor, and the ones nobody thinks about until then.
Florida-specific requirements
Florida's execution formalities are strict: the will must be signed at the end by the testator, in the presence of two attesting witnesses, who must sign in the presence of the testator and of each other. Get that wrong and the document may fail entirely. Adding a self-proving affidavit at signing saves the estate the cost and delay of hunting down witnesses years later.
Florida also constrains what a will can do. Homestead property has constitutional protections that override contrary instructions where there is a surviving spouse or minor child, and a surviving spouse has an elective share right that a will cannot defeat.
When to revisit the plan
Marriage, divorce, a birth, a death, buying property, moving to Florida from another state, or a beneficiary's circumstances changing. Any of those is a reason to have the documents looked at.
What we prepare
- Last Will and Testament, with a self-proving affidavit
- Durable Power of Attorney
- Designation of Health Care Surrogate
- Living Will / advance directive
- Guardianship nominations for minor children
- Review and update of existing out-of-state documents
- Beneficiary designation review — the assets a will does not control
Common questions
What happens if I die without a will in Florida?
Florida's intestacy statutes distribute your estate in a fixed order — spouse, then descendants, then parents, then siblings. That order takes no account of a blended family, an estranged relative, a partner you never married, or a charity you supported for thirty years.
Can I just use an online form?
You can, and many of them fail. Florida's witnessing formalities, its homestead rules and its specific power-of-attorney language are exactly the things generic forms handle badly. The saving is a few hundred dollars; the cost when it fails is borne by your family in probate litigation.
Do I need a trust?
Not everyone does. A revocable living trust can keep assets out of probate and is genuinely useful in some situations — property in more than one state, a beneficiary who needs protection, a desire for privacy. For many Florida families a well-drafted will plus correct beneficiary designations achieves the same result more cheaply. We will tell you honestly which you are.
Does a will control my retirement accounts and life insurance?
No. Accounts with a named beneficiary, and property held jointly with rights of survivorship, pass outside the will regardless of what the will says. Reviewing those designations is part of the work — it is where plans most often quietly break.
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