A Florida family trust is a legal arrangement, governed by Chapter 736 of the Florida Statutes, that lets you place assets under a trustee’s control for the benefit of your family. Most are revocable living trusts you keep full power over during your lifetime, and their main jobs are the same: avoid probate at death, plan for incapacity, and set the terms on which your children or other beneficiaries receive what you leave behind. Done right, a trust keeps your estate out of court and your financial life out of the public record. Done poorly, or left unfunded, it accomplishes very little.
Revocable or Irrevocable: Which Type Fits
Most Florida family trusts are revocable. You keep the right to change the terms, swap beneficiaries, move assets in and out, or dissolve the trust entirely. Unless the trust document says otherwise, Florida law presumes a trust is revocable.1The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 736.0602 – Revocation or Amendment of Revocable Trust You can revoke or amend by following the method the trust document spells out, or if the document is silent, through a later will that specifically refers to the trust or by any other method showing clear intent.
An irrevocable trust is the opposite bargain. Once you fund it, you generally cannot pull assets back or rewrite the terms without the beneficiaries’ consent or a court order. In exchange, you get stronger creditor protection and the ability to move assets out of your taxable estate. Irrevocable trusts show up most often in Medicaid planning, life insurance ownership, and estate tax planning for larger estates. Many families end up using both kinds for different purposes.
What Makes a Florida Trust Legally Valid
Florida law requires five elements. The settlor (the person creating the trust) must have mental capacity, must intend to create a trust, must identify at least one definite beneficiary, must give the trustee actual duties to perform, and cannot be both the sole trustee and the sole beneficiary.2Florida Senate. Florida Code 736.0402 – Requirements for Creation Miss any of those, and a court can declare the trust invalid.
Execution matters too. The parts of a revocable trust that control what happens to assets after the settlor’s death must be signed with the same formalities as a Florida will, meaning two witnesses.3The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 736.0403 – Trust Instrument Skipping the witnesses is one of the quickest ways to invalidate the distribution provisions you care about most. The statute does not require notarization, but many attorneys recommend it anyway because banks and title companies prefer notarized documents when retitling assets.
Funding the Trust Is What Makes It Work
Signing the trust document is only half the job. A trust controls only the assets actually titled in the trustee’s name. If you create a trust but never move your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, or real estate into it, those assets still pass through probate exactly as if the trust did not exist. This is the single most common mistake in Florida estate planning.
Funding means retitling. For a bank account, you typically request the bank’s change-of-ownership form and provide a certification of trust, a summary document that proves the trust exists without revealing all its terms. The account title changes to something like “Jane Smith, Trustee of the Jane Smith Revocable Living Trust dated March 1, 2026.” Brokerage accounts follow a similar process. Real estate requires recording a new deed transferring the property from your name into the trust. That deed is subject to Florida’s documentary stamp tax if the property carries a mortgage, based on the outstanding mortgage balance attributable to the interest being transferred.4Florida Department of Revenue. Documentary Stamp Tax Recording fees are modest and vary by county.
A pour-over will acts as a safety net, directing any assets you forgot to transfer into the trust during your lifetime. The catch is that those assets still pass through probate on the way to the trust, which puts them on the public record and adds to administration costs. The point of funding the trust thoroughly is to leave the pour-over will with nothing to catch.
Choosing a Trustee and What They Must Do
The trustee holds, invests, and distributes trust assets according to the document. A trustee can be an individual, a family member, or a corporate entity such as a bank or trust company. Many settlors name themselves as the initial trustee of their revocable trust and designate a successor to take over at death or incapacity.
Florida holds trustees to a prudent-person standard. A trustee must administer the trust the way a careful and skilled person would, considering its purposes, distribution requirements, and circumstances. Trustees with professional expertise are held to a higher standard based on their specialized skills. Investment decisions must follow Chapter 518, which incorporates modern portfolio theory: diversification, total-return focus, and risk management calibrated to the trust’s objectives and the beneficiaries’ needs.5Florida Senate. Florida Code 736.0901 – Applicability of Chapter 518
A trustee must also keep trust property separate from personal assets, maintain clear records, and incur only expenses that are reasonable relative to the trust’s size and purpose.6Florida Senate. Florida Code 736.0810 – Recordkeeping and Identification of Trust Property A trustee who mixes trust funds with personal money or lets records lapse is exposing themselves to personal liability.
If a trustee stops performing, the settlor, a cotrustee, or any beneficiary can petition a Florida court to remove them. The court can also act on its own initiative. Removal is appropriate when the trustee has committed a serious breach of trust, when cotrustees cannot cooperate well enough to manage the trust, or when the trustee is unfit, unwilling, or persistently fails to administer the trust properly.7FindLaw. Florida Code 736.0706 – Removal of Trustee A court can also remove a trustee when circumstances have substantially changed and all qualified beneficiaries request it, provided a suitable replacement is available and removal is consistent with the trust’s purpose.
Keeping Beneficiaries Informed
A Florida trustee must keep qualified beneficiaries reasonably informed. Within 60 days of accepting the role, a trustee must notify qualified beneficiaries of the acceptance and provide the trustee’s name and address.8Florida Senate. Florida Code 736.0813 – Duty to Inform and Account This duty cannot be overridden by the trust document.9The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 736.0105 – Default and Mandatory Rules
When a revocable trust becomes irrevocable, typically at the settlor’s death, the trustee has an additional 60-day window to notify qualified beneficiaries of the trust’s existence, the identity of the settlor, and the beneficiaries’ right to request a copy of the trust and to receive accountings.8Florida Senate. Florida Code 736.0813 – Duty to Inform and Account For irrevocable trusts, the trustee must provide a formal accounting to each qualified beneficiary at least annually and on any change of trustee or termination of the trust. A beneficiary can waive annual accountings in writing, but the waiver can be withdrawn at any time, and withdrawals apply to future accounting periods.
What a Florida Trust Will and Won’t Protect From Creditors
A revocable trust provides almost no creditor protection during the settlor’s lifetime. Florida statute is blunt: property of a revocable trust is subject to the claims of the settlor’s creditors to the same extent it would be if the settlor owned the property directly.10The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 736.0505 – Creditors’ Claims Against Settlor Putting your bank account into a revocable trust does not shield it from a lawsuit judgment. Functionally, you still own it, and the law treats it that way.
Irrevocable trusts offer stronger protection, but with limits. Under the same statute, a creditor of the settlor can reach the maximum amount the trustee could distribute to or for the settlor’s benefit.10The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 736.0505 – Creditors’ Claims Against Settlor If you create an irrevocable trust and keep the right to receive discretionary distributions, creditors can reach those same funds. Protection is strongest when the settlor has no right to receive trust income or principal. Florida does not recognize self-settled asset protection trusts the way Nevada or South Dakota do, so you cannot create an irrevocable trust for your own benefit and expect Florida courts to shield it from your creditors.
Where Florida trusts genuinely help with protection is after death. Assets in a properly funded trust bypass probate, so they are not exposed to the public claims process creditors rely on. The trust can also include spendthrift provisions that keep beneficiaries from assigning their interests and limit a beneficiary’s creditors from reaching trust assets before distribution.
Homestead Property and Trusts
Florida’s homestead exemption is one of the strongest asset protections in the country, and moving your home into a revocable trust does not automatically forfeit it. Strict conditions apply. The trust beneficiary must have beneficial or equitable title to the property for life, must have the present right to occupy it, and the deed transferring the property into the trust must be recorded. Meet those conditions and the homestead tax exemption stays intact.
Land trusts are different. Under Florida’s Land Trust Act, legal and equitable title sit with the trustee, and the beneficiary holds only a personal property interest. Because the homestead exemption requires an interest in real property, a land trust beneficiary typically does not qualify. Families using land trusts for privacy or liability reasons need to weigh that against the potential loss of homestead protection.
Taxes: Florida and Federal
Florida imposes no state estate tax and no inheritance tax. The state had an estate tax tied to the federal credit for state death taxes, but a federal change eliminated that credit after December 31, 2004, and no Florida estate tax has been due for anyone who died on or after January 1, 2005.11Florida Department of Revenue. Florida Department of Revenue – Estate Tax
Federal estate tax is still a concern for larger estates. For 2026, the basic exclusion amount was increased to $15,000,000 per individual under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill signed into law on July 4, 2025.12Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax Estates below that threshold owe no federal estate tax. Married couples can shelter up to $30,000,000 combined through portability of the unused exclusion amount.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2010 – Unified Credit Against Estate Tax Irrevocable trusts remain a key planning tool for families above those thresholds, because assets placed in an irrevocable trust during the settlor’s lifetime are generally removed from the taxable estate.
For income tax, a revocable trust is invisible to the IRS while the settlor is alive. The IRS treats the settlor as the owner of trust assets, and the trust is disregarded as a separate tax entity. Income earned by trust assets gets reported on the settlor’s personal Form 1040, and no separate trust return is required. Once the settlor dies and the trust becomes irrevocable, it needs its own taxpayer identification number and must file Form 1041 annually. Trust income tax brackets are far more compressed than individual brackets, which is why many trusts are designed to distribute income to beneficiaries rather than accumulate it.
What It Costs to Set One Up
Attorney fees for drafting a Florida family trust typically run from a few hundred dollars for a simple revocable trust to $5,000 or more for complex arrangements involving multiple trusts, irrevocable provisions, or business interests. On top of drafting, expect recording fees when transferring real estate (which vary by county), documentary stamp tax if the property carries a mortgage, and possible fees at banks and brokerage firms for retitling accounts. Some institutions handle trust retitling at no charge; others impose account-opening fees. Amendments to a revocable trust usually cost a fraction of the original drafting fee, which is one of the practical advantages of keeping it revocable.